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Weddings

About

Columbia Firehouse is a historic restaurant and wedding venue located in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. They offer multiple indoor venues for both your ceremony and reception. This multi-level restaurant features antique fixtures, amazing natural light and rich wood details. Columbia Firehouse is a full-service venue that prides themselves on their delicious cuisine and experienced staff.

Facilities and Capacity
Couples can accommodate up to 115 guests at this intimate venue. Their Chophouse, located on the second floor, is a semi-private space perfect for your reception. It features floor-to-ceiling windows and antique brass chandeliers. It also boasts a built-in screen and projector, and can be combined with the Wine Room for additional seating and a dance floor. Their third floor Wine Room features a working fireplace, private back bar and atrium skylight. On the first floor is their Shaker Room, a small space perfect for your engagement party or rehearsal dinner. It has a casual vibe and can accommodate up to 22 seated guests.

Services Offered
This vintage-style restaurant doesn’t charge a “wedding tax.” They have a pre-set food and beverage minimum for all of their spaces, and they will work with you one-on-one to achieve that minimum. They will provide all of your standard rentals such as tables, chairs, linens and more. For additional rental items, they will let you use their vendor discount. Columbia Firehouse also has a sister bakery that will assist you with your cake, desserts, favors and other sweet confections. Additional services include:

  • Setup
  • China
  • Flatware
  • Glassware
  • Barware
  • Outside vendors
  • Wireless internet
  • In-house bar


Cuisine
Columbia Firehouse has a Private Dining team who will work with you to create a customized menu that suits your individual tastes and preferences. They'll make sure you stay within your budget as you select wine and beverage pairings and execute your overall vision. They specialize in familiar American comfort foods, oysters, shellfish, mussels, steaks and salads. Couples can choose between hors d'oeuvres, stations, family style, a cocktail reception, a buffet or a plated meal.

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Reviews of Josephine Brasserie & Bar

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5.0 out of 5 rating
12 Reviews
99% recommend it
  • Quality of service
    4.9 out of 5 rating
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    4.9 out of 5 rating
  • Professionalism
    4.9 out of 5 rating
  • Value
    5 out of 5 rating
  • Flexibility
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Julia Sent on 10/21/2018
5 out of 5 rating

Perfect Rehearsal Dinner Venue

We had our Rehearsal Dinner at Columbia Firehouse the night before our wedding in Old Town Alexandria and it was a truly wonderful experience. We rented out both the Chop House and the Wine Room, which was perfect for our 40 guests. The Wine Room was the perfect spot for guests to mingle for a "cocktail hour" before dinner and it was so convenient to have a bar in the space too. The guests loved that they could be up in the Wine Room or sitting down at the tables in the Chop House room - it was a great way to break up the space. Emily Saccone was also such a pleasure to work with throughout the entire planning process - she was super friendly, responsive, and flexible and made everything so simple! Overall, the setup was perfect for our event, the food was absolutely delicious and everyone loved the drinks/our signature drink option and the custom printed menus at the bar and for the dinner were such a nice touch as well. We received a TON of compliments from our friends and family about the space and the staff working that night was so helpful. I would highly recommend this venue to anyone for a rehearsal dinner or private event!
M
Melanie Sent on 07/30/2018
5 out of 5 rating
Choosing Columbia Firehouse as our reception venue was easily the best decision we made during the entire planning process. We were looking for a venue with great food (check, we are regular patrons here for brunch and dinner), great beer selections (check, they value local breweries and have great selections in can and on tap), that could play music on an ipod and let us play our own live music if we wanted (CHECK!) Emily and Sarah were incredibly helpful from the start of the process to the end, making sure we had everything we needed, meticulously going over details and options. Emily was especially helpful day-of by going ABOVE AND BEYOND and crafted this stunning dessert bar for our guests. Going with Columbia Firehouse means you have access to other excellent Neighborhood Restaurant Group vendors like Buzz Bakeshop and Bluejacket, which was another major selling point for us. Everything was in one place and so well taken care of, even the Chef made us feel like a part of the family. Emily also did a super thoughtful instagram story all about our event with personal details which was so lovely to review the next morning to be reminded of how great the evening was. I'd go back to Emily, Sarah, and the whole Columbia Firehouse family for any of my big party needs in the future.

Final note:
The tasting that we did with Columbia Firehouse was out of this world. We were worried because we were told the tasting would not be "traditional" that we'd have to pay through the nose just to try all the dishes before making a final selection -- this was NOT the case. We paid a nominal fee to try a bunch of different dishes that we could pick out to try in advance, and were treated to an amazing dessert. The Chef came down and spoke with us about each dish, his thoughts behind preparing it the way he did, and we had a really engaging discussion about sustainable eating and the DC/MD/VA restaurant industry. This was really important to us and CF was our perfect fit.
M
Manuel Sent on 06/28/2018
5 out of 5 rating
This was a wedding rehearsal dinner and all at the Firehouse were extremely helpful. From the booking to the event planning everyone was very helpful with ideas and suggestions. Brian the Chef called us an offered another menu option the day before the event, this gave us confidence on how well it will go the next day.

The place was magnificent and the food was delicious, everyone enjoyed their meal and the place. The two waiters there were very attentive and flexible to last minute changing of seating arrangements. Everything went well and was more then we expected.
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