The Henry Clay Reviews

Beautiful venue!!! We loved it.

Ally is THE ABSOLUTE BEST! We are currently working with her for our wedding next year. Not only is she very knowledgeable about her work, she is compassionate and friendly. The venue is breathtaking!

I knew going into wedding planning I wanted a space with a vintage vibe. I got so much more the just that when I held my wedding at The Henry Clay. Not only is the Beaux Arts Ballroom absolutely gorgeous and well-maintained, we got access to the entire fourth floor for the wedding. This included 2 other large rooms (one of which we used for cocktail hour and one we used to store items for the room flip) and a getting ready suite for the bridal party. The suite includes a mini kitchen, full bathroom (which I used all night) tons of seating, and great natural light for hair and makeup. The bones of the ballroom are historical and beautiful and you can do so much to transform it into your dream!

As a wedding planner you always want the day to go off on point. The Henry Clay provided just that. Ally was fabulous and cooperative. Our day of person was Kim. She was there to handle any issue or question we had. She pitched in to help where and when needed. I would highly recommend Ally and her staff of the Henry Clay for your event needs!!! They were the best!

The Ballroom and South Room are 2 of the prettiest rooms in Louisville! Everything was perfect and we couldn't thank Leigh at The Henry Clay and everyone at The Silver Spoon enough for making our daughter's Wedding "the best day of our lives!"

The Henry Clay was amazing! I loved the historic details and the food provided by the Silver Spoon was fantastic! The staff and coordination team were very easy to work with and helped my day go smoothly.

The Henry Clay was so wonderful to work with! Our wedding was on the second floor Grand Ballroom, with our cocktail hour in the South Room on the same floor. It was so nice to have everything on one floor, and it was easily accessible. On a Saturday, street parking was easy to come by for our guests.
You have to use the Silver Spoon (Henry Clay’s exclusive caterer) and WOW they do not disappoint.
Overall spectacular, beautiful space and a great time!

My only complaint was that the bar staff really needs to do a better job of ensuring that underage drinkers dont have access to the alcohol. I understand that someone else could get it for them, but there were times where I saw people underage approach the bar and get served.

Otherwise everything else was excellent!

This was absolutely the PERFECT space for our wedding and reception! I truly believe it wouldn't have been the same if it weren't on the 4th floor of the Henry Clay. The flow of the space was great and each room was so beautiful. We received so many compliments and comments on how cool the space was. Jessica was so easy to work with and was so flexible for anything we needed. Love the Henry Clay!

I used The Henry Clay for my reception only.

Could not have been happier wth The Henry Clay for our wedding. The whole process was a wonderful experience due to The Henry Clay's wonderful staff and delicious food. All of our guests were very complimentary of our wonderful venue choice. Dina handled everything beautifully and was always very easy to get in touch with to answer all our questions. Several of our friends are going to look at The Henry Clay if and when their children get married. Thank you again for a great memory.

We could not have been more pleased. EVERYTHING at the Henry Clay was perfect. It is an absolutely beautiful venue for a wedding and reception. The staff was amazing! (Mother of the bride)

Everyone we worked with was helpful and made sure we had what we needed to make my daughters wedding a once in a lifetime event.

The Henry Clay is a stunning building. If you are looking for a dramatic venue with an old world flair -- look no further! I received so many compliments from guests about the building. We rented the Beaux Arts Ballroom for the reception and its foyer for the cocktail hour. There is a very charming terrace off the foyer, which has Italian lights and a lot of seating. Sarah B. was very responsive to emails, easy to work with, and extremely accommodating given the fact that I live 500 miles away. The cost of rental was comparable to other event spaces in Louisville, but the Henry Clay's location can't be beat.

Our wedding ceremony and reception were on the 4th floor of The Henry Clay and it was the perfect backdrop for the fairytale wedding our daughter had always dreamed of!
Sarah was our first contact and she was very professional, courteous, helpful and patient with us!
We rented the entire 4th floor and had a lovely event! It was elegant, beautiful, and the perfect size for our wedding of approximately 140 guests.
The Henry Clay is a perfect choice for a dream wedding and reception and we recommend it without any reservations at all! Every person we dealt with was professional and helpful. It is a wonderful wedding venue!

I fell in love with The Henry Clay as soon as I walked into the Beaux Arts Ballroom. I knew right then and there that this was the room I wanted to get married in. The elegant restored 1920's architecture was gorgeous! Our wedding was a gothic Victorian theme and the building went perfectly with the dark elegant ambiance I was planning. And the venue as basically a one stop shop between the venue, the Hilton Garden Inn, and 8UP Catering, they are all under the same owner company (First Hospitality). I will be speaking on both The Clay and 8UP in this review because they are under the same parent company and I worked with Ally (with The Clay) and Apollo (with 8UP) interchangabley throughout the months of planning and Apollo didn't start working for First Hospitality until a few months before the wedding. I will also review 8UP separately.

I loved that we got the entire floor and a huge bridal suite to get ready in. This was a huge selling point that not many other venues in Louisville or the surrounding areas have. There was more than enough room for myself, 5 bridesmaids, 4 mom's and grandma's, a few friends, 3 hair stylists, and 2 makeup artists to work and us all get ready without feeling claustrophobic! That's impressive! Not to mention the full kitchen and full bathroom in there as well. The guys had the Tavern Room and a board room to get ready and hang out in. There is also an open air courtyard, The Billiards Room, a second board room, and a separate set bathrooms for guests on the 4th floor. The breakfast was complimentary and was catered in by 8UP, that was also a huge perk bc we definitely needed to eat!

Day of logistics were a little crazy, there were some things that were supposed to be taken care of by the caterers that were not, like they were supposed to put on the chair covers but the guys and our family ended up putting all those on which took a ton of time away from them being able to set other decor up. We were told to have the covers at the venue at 10am and they would be taken care of, but they were there well before that time and no one from the building came to put them on.

We had 8UP do our rehearsal dinner upstairs at the restaurant and they did wonderful for that. Great ambiance, plenty of food, and we took home the leftovers which was nice. They also catered the reception with an open bar as well. We did received a $500 discount off our catering bill because we did all of our food through 8UP. On the wedding day, we had cocktail hour in The Tavern Room while the Beaux Arts room was being flipped for the reception. There was supposed to be a bar set up in the Traven before guests started coming in after the ceremony, but it apparently didn't get set up until our groomsmen's wife tracked someone down and made them set it up. I didn't know that until weeks later, which was annoying since the liquor was paid for by us. The food for the reception was set up in the Billiards Room and a second bar was set up in the Beaux Arts room for the reception. We paid extra for a "signature cocktail" at the bar that was a bourbon Manhattan. It was unfortunately mixed so strong no one could drink it, so that was a huge waste of money. We paid for 80 people to eat and maybe 55 people were actually there including the DJ, 2 photographers, and a videographer to eat and they ran out of food. I was told later that guests went back for seconds and there was only salad left. We had 2 meats, 2 vegetables, and salad; that seemed like a lot of food! If it was supposed to feed 80 people and that many did not show up. What if 80 people had actually shown up to eat?? Would some of my guests gone hungry? I would have been pretty furious because the food we picked weren't things that could just be whipped up real quick. Now don't get me wrong, the food was delicious! The short ribs were to die for! Everyone still talks about how good everything was, but we were super close to running out of food which was not ok. Now I didn't find out about a lot of this until later, from a bride's perspective everything went smoothly minus our signature cocktail being undrinkable.

Generally, overall, we had a great experience having our wedding at The Henry Clay. Things are bound to go wrong on your wedding day and mine was no exception. I did exactly what I wanted to do and that was have the day with my girls in a huge, lovely bridal suite getting all beautiful. I got to literally see my vision, dreams, and all my hard work come to life! It was gorgeous! And I got to marry the man of my dreams in a beautiful, historic venue. There were hiccups along the way, but that's to be expected. I would still recommend The Henry Clay and First Hospitality for your wedding needs.

Most gorgeous venue in Louisville!

Henry Clay was a place I had dreamed of getting married at since I was a little girl growing up in Louisville, KY. The venue was spectacular!

The Henry Clay was great. We loved the building and got so many compliments! Everyone was very helpful and the staff was great!

We held our reception at the Henry Clay in the grand ball room, and it was amazing. The room had a great stage for a band, and we rented the Atrium outside of the grand ball room to have a cocktail hour before the reception.

My wedding and reception were held at the Henry Clay, an old renovated 1920's building in the heart of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was the most perfect setting for my wedding. The decor of each of the rooms our party used was the perfect backdrop for photos and the 'experience' of the event. It created a romantic, classic, and chic setting.

I used the bridal suite on the 4th floor of the building. I it includes a generous space including a kitchenette, open living/dining area, a bedroom with large windows, and a vanity/bathroom with bathtub. It was tastefully decorated and provided a good backdrop to many of my bridal photos. This room was directly across from the reception room- the Beaux Arts room. All I had to do to take prewedding photos was head across the hall!

We held our wedding in the center of the downstairs lobby. The room is open to the second floor. The ceilings are vast and there was a grand piano available for the use of our string quartet, which they utilized during the pre- and post- wedding music. The setting was beautiful and tastefully restored without being over the top. I entered the room from the elevator which is near the front doors to the building. They supplied a beautiful deep red carpet that extended the length of the aisle. They supplied soft gold chairs that we added sheer gold bows to the back of on the first two family rows. We hung tobacco canvas from the 2nd floor to create an altar. The room didn't need many flowers because of the sheer beauty of the space. I believe we only used 2 oversized planters filled with flowers.

After the wedding we had a cocktail hour as a prelude to dinner and dancing. We had this in the promenade on the 4th floor- a vast hallway in which we setup gift tables, an open bar (very tastefully done), and the servers brought around classy appetizers. It was beautiful. We did this for about 30-40 minutes.

The wedding started at 6:00pm and the reception started around 7. Almost as soon as we sat down the servers (for our 20 tables at 6 people each) began taking drink orders. They promptly brought dinner about 5 minutes after we were seated. The space we used for the reception included: (again the entire 4th floor- using the bridal suite, Beaux arts Room, Promenade, and terrace (good outdoor space for smokers and once again decorated classically). It was very flexible and beautiful. The Beaux Arts room has 2-story ceilings topped with beautiful gold and green stained glass skylights. I believe they allow candlelight although we did not use it. And at the front of the room there are large, large floor to ceiling columns that provide the backdrop to the deep red carpeted stage- we used this to place the cake in the middle. It looked very grand! :)

I hope this is helpful! I loved the spaces at this venue! No complaints!

They were great to work with and flexible with our odd schedule. We were both living out of town and had to do a lot of the work over the phon eor via email, but they were willing to accomodate drop offs and office visits. Beautiful location, everyone that came agreed.

Grate place, very fast response and they make everything about you on your day

The Henry Clay was great! We mostly worked with Sarah and she was so sweet and answered any questions we had right away. We did have some struggles getting ahold of Jessica, I am not sure why.

As far as the beauty of the facility, it definitely exceeds the standard. We had our wedding on the fourth floor with the cocktail hour in the South room and the reception in the Grand Ballroom, and the space is fantastic. City Soultions and Sarah were as wonderful as the facility itself. In booking the Henry Clay, you must use their catering service, and that was where our qualms fell. We did find it rather difficult to work with Silver Spoon and Michelle. Although they were very good at responding in the beginning before the contract was signed, we soon found it impossible to hear back from them. We had also discussed with them bringing in our own appetizers due to a mixed culture/vegetarian cuisine, however they would not allow this and instead said we could not have the dishes we wanted because they were not able to make them. Somehow, it feels that there could have been a more happy medium reached, however there were not many concessions made on their part to make this happen.