We enjoyed having our reception here. There were enough tables and chairs (definitely pay the token amount to have them set up for you) that they provided. We had the separate room for the catering. You can’t beat the price and the service. I highly
recommend the Carnegie Building!

I had my reception here. They did a great job at setting the table's up just how I asked, which made for a very easy set up of our decorations. If you are looking for a classy venue that doesn't break the bank, do a Friday evening reception like we did. You wont find another venue in town for as nice for such an amazing price. Very beautiful venue!

The only reason I took a star off for value is that prices have gone up since opening. Also, Saturdays are quite a bit more expensive than a Friday. That said, we chose to have a Friday wedding so that we could have it at the Carnegie. It's the old Lawrence city library, and it has been renovated into a charming and beautiful space. It is completely accessible with modern bathrooms, but still has so much charm. We ended up needing to change our wedding date by two weeks several months out, and that was so easy! It just took a 5-minute phone call and I had an email confirmation in minutes. They can do any combination of curtains and pull up the shades for you, and they arrange the tables and chairs before you get there and take them down as well. When you rent the large main room, you also get use of a side room in the front. We put our photobooth in there and it was perfect! Our wedding had 65 guests and it was a really comfortable amount of space. I'm sure you could cram quite a few more in there! We also got all of our deposit back, which was a really nice post-honeymoon surprise to get in the mail.

Our experience with the Carnegie Building (owned by the City of Lawrence) was great until the day of. They didn't unlock the doors for us, and the groomsmen who were handling set up ended up having to sort of jimmy a door open to get in. I don't know whether the day-of on-site person wasn't there for the most part or whether the groomsmen weren't smart enough to go find him, but the front doors ended up propped open with bricks rather than unlocked for the whole day and the on-site person never made an appearance upstairs to check in with us.
Otherwise, everything was great. The rental price for a Sunday is very reasonable, you basically get free reign of the place, and it's pretty nice, particularly if you hire lighting for the scrim curtain that surrounds the ballroom. The sound system didn't work right when I went into test it the day before, but they got it fixed on a weekend for us. They were also very helpful and let us rent the space for a couple of hours the day before to do some set up, since there wasn't an event the evening before. In fact, with the exception of the day-of contact, all interactions with the City Parks & Rec guy were quite professional and prompt. If you use them, I suggest you just request the cell phone number of the on-site person and that should solve any problems.