Falkirk Cultural Center Reviews

Beautiful venue, friendly staff, very responsive, reasonable price

The Falkirk is the perfect site for a wedding and reception. The gardens are absolutely beautiful and the Victorian mansion is a true masterpiece- all make for some fantastic photos! The staff were a pleasure to work with, super responsive and very accommodating. I would highly recommend the site to anyone looking to host a party, wedding, or other special event! Thank you Falkirk Staff (Michael, Risa & Valerie)!

If you're tired of hotel ballroom or winery weddings that all seem the same, or if you just want a venue with a bit more character and charm, you need to take a look at Falkirk.
We wanted a venue that was unique and a wedding that was laid-back and fun for everyone, which can be tough when you have guests from 8mo-80ys of age. Falkirk delivered - the house and grounds are beautiful, and the layout is perfect. With all the different, yet connected, spaces, guests can dance, talk, eat, or rest their feet in different areas/volume levels without ever feeling like they are missing out on the party. I can't even count how many times people came up to us at the wedding (or have since called us) to say how much they loved the venue.
The property is managed through the City of San Rafael, and all of those we dealt with throughout the process were wonderful (Special thank you to Michael who was our main on-site contact and also did all our walk-throughs with us. We so very much appreciated his honesty and insights, and of course helpfulness). In case that isn't enough, the cost was very reasonable, and was certainly worth every penny!
For reference, we had 80 people in attendance. We had our ceremony and cocktail hour on the front steps/lawn and a seated dinner on the deck, followed by a reception in the house with dancing in the parlor. It was perfectly comfortable at that number, but I'm not sure I would advise having too many more for a seated dinner on the deck (though I suspect they may be able to accommodate more if you are doing dinner on their wedding lawn, as that space was fairly large).

The Falkirk was the perfect place for our wedding. Michael spent a considerable amount of time answering our never ending questions. It was great to know we could always rely on him to give us suggestions.

Since the Falkirk is already a stunning Victorian mansion, you don't really need to worry about getting together lots of wedding decorations- the architecture handles this for you. Also, since it's owned by the city of San Rafael, it's about half the rate of other venues you'll find on the market. It was also nice to know that the rental fees go towards preserving this special place.

During the ceremony, Michael and Nao did a fantastic job being available in case we needed them. The beauty of this property combined with the attentive staff and low prices makes The Falkirk Cultural Center a win/win/win!

This is a great venue. Great location. The staff is so helpful and responsive. It is a beautiful venue - exactly what we were looking for, and it's affordable.

Absolutely beautiful space. We barely even needed decorations. We only had centerpieces and a few flowers and candles in the parlor where we had our ceremony. The space was already elegant without adding decorations. This definitely helped with keeping to our budget. They worked with our other vendors to get everything delivered day before for ease of setting up day of. We had full range of the grounds for pictures and for our guests to explore and experience the beauty of the space. Can't imagine a more perfect place to have shared such a wonderful day with our family and friends. Everyone loved the venue and took a TON of pictures of the grounds.

Falkirk is a wonderful wedding venue. Our guests kept complimenting the venue, it was perfect! We had our ceremony in the garden, which was great because it was more intimate (we had about 70 guests). And the reception on the side porch of the main house. The best aspects of this venue are: price, location (and therefore weather great and convenient central area for people to get to), the fact that there is an indoor and outdoor portion in the rare case of bad weather (calming to know you have the option of staying indoor), beautiful house and grounds, freedom to use any caterer or not to cater (saving even more money).

My husband and I held our Wedding Ceremony and Reception at Falkirk on 8/15/2014. I can't say enough great things about this Venue. From Beth and Michael to the venue setting! With two separate locations to hold the ceremony and this amazing 1888 Victorian home to hold the reception our family and friends were in love with the house as much as we were when we first saw it.

Beth and Michael are both super responsive and very easy to work with. There are not a lot of rules associated with renting the venue, which was great and meant we could pretty much do what we wanted as far as decorating. We highly recommend this venue for your wedding or party!

We were incredibly lucky to book Falkirk Cultural Center as our wedding ceremony and reception site. This old mansion is incredible and at such a great value, it's a shame not to use it for a grand occassion like a wedding. The quality of service the City of San Rafael as well as from Mike and staff at Falkirk was incredible and we thank them for giving us a wedding to remember. They were responsive to our questions, and when we visited Falkirk for the first time and a few times after that as well. Mike gave us a lovely tour around the house and property on our first visit which really made us want to book Falkirk. Mike and team are professional from begining to end. Given that it's an old house and property of the city, there are some restrictions on what you can/can't do at the house/property. However, those are very minor inconveniences and overall, they were incredibly flexible on what we can do. For example. They let you bring in your own caterer. They let you bring in your own liquor for your reception which saved us a lot of money. And the place is beautiful with a garden and a wedding lawn and a house with a veranda. It's perfect for a nice summer wedding and really great year round actually. I highly recommend Falkirk Cultural Center.

Falkirk was a fantastic venue. We received many compliments from our guests on the setting. The garden was perfect for the ceremony; the verandah for hors d'oeuvres; and the parlor for dinner and toasts. The piano was well-tuned. The facilities manager (Mike) on our wedding day was very helpful. The atmosphere was just what we imagined for our perfect day.

My husband and I got married at Falkirk on June 15, 2013. We could not be happier with Falkirk as a venue. All of our guests loved the house and the grounds.

We loved that we could get married in the "wedding garden" out behind the house, have dinner on the big deck, and have dancing and merriment in the ballroom/parlor. We also hired a pianist to play the piano that is in the house during our cocktail hour.

The house itself is beautiful and does not need much decorating (we just had some candles and flowers for a little ambiance). Our wedding of 80 people fit perfectly. The hourly rate is also very affordable for a wedding venue!

If you are looking for a truly unique and beautiful place to get married, Falkirk is it!

Falkirk ended up being our fall back for a venue, as a friend was going to let us use their property, unfortunately, said friend had things come up and we were venue-less. We were lucky that Falkirk doesn't book more than a year out and that Sundays are not that busy for them, because they took us on!

The property was beautiful and since it is open most of our pre- wedding meetings were easy to coordinate. There was some inconsistencies between our first meeting and the week before the wedding but all of them turned out to be positive. We were told it was 90% going to rain on our wedding day, which is did not! We were also told that we couldn't have access to the gallery spaces on the second floor, which at the time of our first meeting didn't bother us as the art displayed was not within our taste. The week of the wedding however the gallery space had been changed to something I very much enjoyed and we were told they would be happy to open it up for us for a few hours. My biggest wedding day regret? Not actually getting up to the gallery that I was so excited to see!
There was an issue with the rehearsal, as we were told when we booked that we could have the rehearsal in the intended space (rose garden) the day before the wedding. Several months before the wedding we were told that no, we could not be in the rose garden for the rehearsal as they would be having gardeners in the rose garden all day. That was a little frustrating but we ended up rehearsing in a different part of the property and saw that it wasn't gardeners in the rose garden but a plant sale, something that couldn't have been put on hold for us to waltz down the aisle to practice.

There's more to say but i have run out of space, loved it here!

Falkirk was a nice place to have a wedding. We did our ceremony on the front right lawn and reception on the back garden lawn. Our original walk thru and meeting with Mike was great although communication was slow from the curator. We were told the garden lawn grass would be fixed and we would have help setting up our ceremony chairs. Fast forward to about six months later with some administration changes. We were receiving quick responses from the offsite team managing the payments, etc. Mike however had a sour attitude on our last walk thru (which was about a week before our wedding) and complained about his new boss a lot. He also informed us when we were confirming where we wanted the chairs set up that he would never have told us he would help with the chairs b/c they don't do that there and said we might have to deal with the rentals being in our way from the wedding the night before us (which thankfully we didn't). Then on the day of the wedding he was also not friendly - all in stark contrast to his original super friendly demeanor. Not very professional and some stressful things for us to deal with. These interactions aside, we had nothing against the actual venue and were glad all worked out. We received our deposit back on time and had no issues with the facilities.

They promised trimming back some branches so that we could stand under the oak tree, our wedding pictures show that this never happened.... The person on duty during our event spent the whole time talking to someone not with our event and was unavailable to answer questions. However, the venue was beautiful and you can't beat the price!