Brooklyn Art Library

Fantastic experience from the first walk-through to the end of the wedding night! We had our ceremony and reception with dinner and dancing here and it was perfect. The space is bright, beautiful and intimate and the staff is great too - professional, nice, accommodating and easy to work with for our vendors. Our guests loved it too and we got tons of compliments on the choice of venue after the wedding. It was so much fun, we wish we could do it again!

This is an adorable venue and I'm so glad I found them. If you're looking for a smaller, off-beat venue that will keep things intimate and unique, this is definitely a good choice for you. A lot of our guests really felt it was special and different.... and since we're writers, we kept hearing, "This venue is SO you guys," which was nice. While there's nothing wrong with traditional banquet halls, having our wedding at Brooklyn Art Library definitely made it more memorable - "cool" was used a lot. Additionally, since the room is filled with books, there's very little need for decoration: some string lights (provided) and flowers and you're good to go!

We had a few hiccups early on with communication and things we hadn't expected, but I will definitely say that the venue was willing to work with us when those problems arose. So while it was definitely a little extra work to get things how we wanted them, working with BAL didn't become difficult. Just know you might need to put in a little extra work and be clear about your vision, since the staff at the space is very hands-off when it comes to event planning.

This venue requires you to use a day-of planner, which I think is the right call. Their staff is very friendly but they're not event coordinators, which means you'll want someone who knows what they're doing around day-of. Hiring a strong catering team also helped us fill this gap. Again, if you and your other hires fill in some of the event-planing gaps, everything will work out beautifully, as it did for me and my partner.

One thing I will say is that we were told the venue had a capacity of 100 people and that's not really true. We ended up with 80 people day of, and it was tight. Fortunately, it was a nice night and we were able to have people hang around outside, but bad weather would've been catastrophic. It also got warm inside, despite the a/c. I'd say aim for a 50-60 person wedding if using this venue, no bigger!