Bottom line: We recommend.

This venue is gorgeous and perfect for an outdoor and DIY wedding. The house is beautiful and the yards are spacious enough to host both ceremony and reception. The patio as a dance floor was awesome. We had more than enough time to set things up/break down, enough room to get ready, etc.

Ann S. answered all of our questions before the wedding and was flexible throughout the whole process. She made it very easy to book a venue from across the country!

The day-of, Heather was our coordinator and she really went above and beyond. Before the wedding, I was so worried about who would coordinate things and we nearly hired a coordinator. I am very glad we didn't, because Heather made sure the whole thing went smoothly. She worked with our DJ, bartending and catering companies, she even helped direct us out to the ceremony, and she stayed until the vendors left which allowed us to not worry and just leave to go to our after-party. She was friendly and FUN -- she danced with us. It was great. Thank you, Heather!!!!!!

Things I wish were better communicated before the wedding:
- That the coordinator would actually help coordinate on the day-of (it was communicated that they wouldn't help, but she did)
- There were several 6-foot tables in the house, which I didn't know so I rented and paid for more tables than needed
- There are no fans in the house and I wish we would have rented some (it's an old house, there's no AC)
- There are cobwebs and spiders in the house and I wish they would have cleaned the massive webs so we didn't have to (eek! :) ).

The Birch House was simply the most magical, surreal location for our wedding and reception. We were married under an incredibly beautiful tree that had a natural arching branch over where we stood. The house was beautiful and we had a perfect indoor/ outdoor reception. The staff was friendly, professional and extremely helpful! they were also incredibly flexible in allowing us to schedule time for decorating/rehearsal prior to the wedding. Dream location!!!

So excited! So easy to deal with and such a great deal!

We booked through Glen Helen but we didn't use the Birch House, we had the Vernet Center. We were overall so pleased with the venue! It was great for the price. We were able to have the space from 10am to midnight for the day of the wedding, which gave us plenty of time to set up and tear down. If we wanted to, we could have reserved the space for the whole weekend to allow for a Friday set up and a Sunday clean up (more expensive, though). Alcohol was allowed, chairs and tables included. We had to be flexible in creating a space to get ready (very small bathrooms) but were allowed to use conference rooms/office space to get ready. We used wrapping paper to cover the windows to create sealed off dressing rooms. Would recommend!

Our initial meetings with Ann, the venue’s coordinator, were positive; she demonstrated knowledge & experience, and promised to check in with our vendors & provide staff to help things go smoothly. However, during the following year, several emails & calls went unanswered. To make matters more stressful, the venue turned out not to be “wedding-ready” on our set up day. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes, the tables were difficult to access, & the chairs were filthy. While we understood that the chairs are stored in a back room we had no idea the cleaning we were in for. Our team of 3 spent more than 3 hours with cleaning materials to remove mud, wine and other dirt from the chairs. All this unexpected labor to clean chairs as well as tables, and inside counter tops meant we had to curtail and rush other plans. Furthermore, Ann had failed to address logistics with vendors promised earlier or fix the non-working lighting that we noted weeks earlier in our last appointment. At the end of the night, several bridal party members, including the bride and groom, were treated rudely by the assigned Birch House staff – telling them in a dismissive tone that the upstairs suites were a mess, even urging the wedding couple to hurry up. Nowhere in the contract did it say that the second floor had to be cleaned that night, and the upstairs clutter was mainly clothes and empty water bottles. The staff’s rudeness on the wedding day was even more inexplicable by the unclean state that we dealt with the prior day. In hindsight, the extra overhead we experienced because of the venue’s lack of oversight makes us question whether the Birch House was the best choice. The Birch House is a memorable and lovely venue, but be prepared for extra stress and work to create the day you always wanted.

The Birch House at Glen Helen is absolutely beautiful and I was excited to find a venue for our wedding that met what we were looking for. It's intimate and charming and was everything I was looking for! The staff is very friendly and I had a good experience with them up to the week of my wedding. The event coordinator, Ann, had solicited her services as a wedding planner when we booked the venue. She is pleasant and sweet, but unorganized and this became very apparent the week before our wedding. We arrived at the Birch House the day before to start decorations and my family was asked to set up tables and chairs and clean bird feces off of them. It seemed unorganized and unprofessional to ask for my family to be cleaning bird feces off of everything... especially since this can be a major source of spreading disease AND that is a venue responsibility. My father-in-law showed up the next morning a couple of hours before the wedding and the chairs were still dirty with bird feces in the ceremony area and wouldn't have been clean by the time guests arrived for the wedding if he hadn't spent an hour and a half cleaning them. Ann said she would also be there the entire time to help with transitioning guests, caterers and I shouldn't stress about anything, but I had to try to find them multiple times to help. Overall, it would have been a better experience if I had not paid for her to help plan it because I could have ensured things didn't fall apart the week before the wedding. She mixed up our tent rentals, booking reservations, there was no lighting in the tent whatsoever for my wedding ceremony (which caused nobody to get a good picture of us being married and this is something she should have addressed prior as something we needed and we would have been happy to pay the additional expense), and she should have had staff available to clean the tables and chairs. I would not recommend using her as a wedding planner if you book anything at Glen Helen.