Des Moines Heritage Center is a beautiful venue in the East Village area of Des Moines. We had the ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner and dance all at one place! Our guests loved being able to park and be at one place for the rest of the day...and we did too! The Heritage Center, Depot and the Plaza area are perfect for being able to move your guests, yet be all in one place. Sarah was awesome to work with and our vendors all enjoyed coordinating with her too!

Wonderful venue and people to work with! My husband and I had our wedding reception here in March 2023 and we loved everything about our experience. Tim and Sarah were so accessible, friendly, and helpful!

We were charmed by the history of the Depot and it provided a great location for our wedding party photos (both indoors and outdoors).

The event space itself brings in beautiful natural light in the daytime. It’s lovely on its own but also a blank canvas for any style of decor. In the evening, it's magical to look out and see the Depot lit up and a view of the State Capitol building from the east windows.

We felt very cared for by the Des Moines Heritage Center team. Their communication was quick, clear, and honestly took some stress off of the wedding planning process. We had everything we needed, from coat racks and an awesome A/V system to plentiful outlets, a bridal suite, and table linens (so many color choices!). We're also thankful they let us work with our preferred vendors.

If you're looking for a unique venue with a rich history located in the heart of Des Moines, this is your place!

We researched several venues for our wedding. We knew we were going to be paying for a pretty good chunk of the wedding out of our own pocket so balancing budget with a venue that could also accommodate a potential guest count of 300 that still allowed some flexibility in caterer/bartender was important. They allowed us to hire Smokey D's for our wedding caterer as long as they could agree to their vendor agreement (no issues there) which helped us keep cost down while providing great food for our higher guest count. Catering and bartender cost for our wedding had a higher impact on overall budget than venue so we were able to balance that out.

As an architect, I loved the Des Moines Heritage Center's clean, modern aesthetic adjacent to the historic brick building of the train depot. You can tell a lot of care went into the planning process and the venue was great the day of the wedding. Having the bridal room directly connected to the women's restroom was also nice - our makeup artist ended up setting up a table/chair in the women's restroom for added space/they liked the lighting while hair happened in the bridal room. Groomsmen were able to hide in the Train Depot during father-daughter first looks to avoid my future husband seeing me ahead of the first-look. Tim and Liz did a good job of accommodating and helping us with the wedding and were very flexible. We had a hiccup towards the beginning end of the planning process but they worked to make-up for that in the months following.

Having helped a friend set-up their wedding previously, it was super nice that they took care of all set-up of the tables, chairs and most of the linens. That takes a long time to do and is super nice that they'll take care of it!

The security guard that is required as part of the venue rental they helped coordinate which was another thing off of our to-do list and was affordable.

Their wedding venue coordinator for floor plan layouts was very easy to work with and made that process go smoothly as well.

The day of the wedding Tim and Liz helped direct confused delivery drivers for bagels/Jimmy John's to the correct places, added a couple tables outside because of the nice weather, did a small flip for us, and helped with some of the clean-up which we definitely didn't expect. They also allowed us to move all of our decorations to a storage area overnight to pick-up mid-day on Sunday instead of having to have every little thing in a vehicle Saturday night. Only require that gifts get taken out for obvious reasons.

Minor things to note that could help with future wedding couple's planning - we didn't realize until a couple weeks before the wedding that they don't provide linens for tables where food will be served (buffet line, cake table, etc.) or for vendors. The website advertised linens, contract wasn't clear and it showed up in paperwork ~1-1.5 months prior. Our caterer had linens for the food line but we ended up purchasing a couple linens for the DJ table/cake table. This made it a little confusing at clean-up when our families were trying to help and we ended up losing one of our tablecloths because it's not clear to others when we bought white to match the venue's for consistency. Luckily they were pretty inexpensive from Amazon. Lastly - storage of things overnight for clean-up the next day does not include use of their refrigerator. We ended up having to throw away our food leftovers because we were all staying at a hotel and didn't have a fridge big enough to accommodate the two catering trays leftover. If I had known that I probably would have made sure an in-town friend or bridesmaid could have taken them home but it was too hard to figure out who was still there/driving before 11 PM.

I'm very happy with our decision to have the wedding ceremony and reception at this location and loved the convenience near downtown hotels to allow guests a safe return back to their hotels after a fun night. The Des Moines Heritage Trust clearly puts a lot of work into the venue and making the day great for couples!