I just had my wedding at Heritage Square last Saturday (9/5) and the venue was just amazing! It was affordable and our guests loved the docents for the abbreviated house tours. You have to bring in everything to use at the venue but it was worth it to us. We loved having the ability to choose whatever vendors we wanted and not be limited. Kim is very responsive and wonderful to work with. If you are an organized couple and willing to find the vendors, this place is worth it!

Absolutely beautiful venue but lots of work to do setup! If you would like to have your wedding here be prepared to do lots of work in preparation setup and cleanup!

We just booked Heritage Square for our wedding next year. I am so excited to work with them! This is a little hidden gem of a location in Los Angeles and the venue fee goes towards restoring the houses on the property, which is fantastic! I love that you are able to select all of your own vendors unlike many other venues that force you to use their caterer or their rental companies, etc. This is really a good location for a DIY bride!

The Heritage Square is such a lovely museum and an excellent wedding venue. We had our ceremony and reception there and loved it! It is a good price and your money goes towards a great cause, it's beautiful and doesn't need a lot of extra decorations and it is so unique and special! We have received so many compliments on our venue and people loved finding this hidden gem and getting transported to a special little blast of the past! You do have to bring in all of your own supplies (catering, lighting, a generator, rentals, etc) which can be a bit of a headache but it is worth it to have such a lovely and unique wedding venue! The staff were very nice and helpful and answered months and months of questions and worked with our needs. You can even get costumed docents to give tours to your guests! Such an amazing museum experience and an awesome venue for a good price!

I absolutely LOVED that we got married at the Heritage Square Museum (it was breathtakingly beautiful, even on our hot summer day!). However, here are a few things to consider if you're think about getting married here - from one bride to another:

1) The staff are friendly, but since it is a living history museum, they are pretty strict on their rules (if anything, try and work with Kim! She is hilarious and makes the whole process so much easier.)
2) Super big pro: a Saturday wedding is no more expensive than a Sunday or Tuesday wedding here. So rare in LA! (And the wedding venue world, for that matter).
2) This venue provides the outdoor space, and that's it. (Unless you have 35 people attending your wedding, and then you can get married inside one of the houses.) You get a gorgeous and unique wedding backdrop, and that is it. My husband & I really wanted to do a food truck, so we were specifically looking for a venue who didn't require us to use their caterer. Pro: We could bring in whatever caterer we wanted to this space! Con: You get to bring in *everything else* too.
For me, as a naive & excited bride, I said, okay cool! We pick our own vendors & get to choose for ourselves! And while that is totally awesome, I didn't realize that it meant we needed to find (and pay extra) for everything from tables/chairs/tablecloths, to a dance floor, any and ALL lighting, and even bathrooms.
I was very excited about the comparatively less-expensive price (it was $4500 vs $7000+), but I didn't factor in that all those other "extra necessities" made it the same price (and perhaps more expensive) than other venues in the LA area (that had some, or all, of those things included in the cost of the venue).

That being said, our wedding day was so wonderful, and I was surprised how much our guests completely loved the venue! It is a beautiful, rare gem here in LA, perfect if you want your wedding to have a fun, vintage-y, whimsical feel.

My fiancé and I were so so so excited to host our wedding at this beautiful and historic sight. Our meeting with Kori went swimmingly: we could have a food truck if we coordinated it through Cindy at David’s Catering. We could bring our own bar and bartenders (something we were looking for because I have bar connections), there were no minimums, this place checked all the boxes. We happily signed the contract, paid the $1,500 deposit and got to work planning.

I contacted Cindy who, right off the bat, said that we were not permitted to have a food truck be our main source of food but she assured us that David’s Catering could make whatever we wanted and were very fair. Okay, cool, I get it, I did initially think it was weird that I could go through a catering company to get my food catered by someone else. The first real problems arose when she sprung a $4,000 minimum plus a $500 +20% service charge bar buyout fee PLUS we were not permitted to have our own bartender, and we must hire her bartenders for their hourly rate plus autogratuity plus another 20% service charge. Ummm, what?

So I call Kori and let her know that I was feeling really blindsighted by this because I had explicitly asked about all of these things and suddenly I am being told the exact opposite of what I was told when I handed over my $1500 deposit. Kori apologized profusely and told me that she didn’t know where Cindy was getting all these rules from and she told me absolutely there would be no minimum or bar buyout fee. Great, cool, awesome.

So I get to work planning a really easy and simple garden party style menu: charcuterie station, little tea sandwiches, and mini chicken and waffles. Literally that was it. Cindy comes back with a $35/person quote. I asked her for the itemized breakdown of how she got to that number and she said she didn’t know what I meant. I let her know that I simply don’t understand how our easy and light menu could cost the same as the BBQ Package on their brochure which was 4 kinds of BBQ meat, 3 sauces, 5 sides, and bread. She came back with “well if you order charcuterie at a restaurant it’s not gonna be cheap.” So I ask her to help me build a menu that is more in line with a reasonable budget. Got on the phone with her and the chef, talked about everything, they said they’d get a menu to me by the end of the week. Beautiful.

Two weeks later I hadn’t heard anything back. I was already having such a hard time with Cindy that I just decided it would be better to go down to ceremony only at the museum. I let her know that I appreciated the work she had put in so far but that I had decided to go a different direction. She called me trying to get me to change my mind and finally emailed over the menu they had come up with.

Meatballs in grape jelly, deviled eggs with cheese whiz on ritz crackers, hamburger helper, were some of the highlights there. Also hamburger helper wasn’t just how I’m describing it: it was literally listed on the menu. Yeah, no thanks, not convinced.

A month before the wedding and I emailed Cindy (who was also in charge of the rentals) stating that I just needed 120 chairs and a portable restroom. Do I want a water station plus a table for $4/person plus the cost of a server and 20% service charge? No thanks, just the chairs and the restroom. Do I need a table? No thanks just the chairs and the restroom. Do I want to hire her to coordinate the ceremony? No thanks, just the chairs and the restroom. Am I sure I don’t want a water station for $3/person plus the cost of a server and 20% service charge? No thanks, just the chairs and the restroom. FINALLY after 2 weeks I got an email quote for the chairs, with a delivery fee that cost more than the chairs, and in an entirely separate email she sent me an attachment of a $3700 plus 20% service charge plus delivery fee, 8 stall, air conditioned portable restroom trailer. Now in our initial conversations at the beginning she sent me a $400 restroom and said the standard for my sized party for full wedding was just two of those, so I saw that portable trailer and I was done. I emailed her a picture of the attachment of the previously quotes restroom and she told me they were one in the same.

So I got on the phone with Kori and told her I had to be done with Cindy’s predatory, bait and switch tactics. At every turn she was trying to shove me in a corner and make me feel like I had no choices, and she was going to try to milk as much money out of me as possible with the wedding getting closer and closer and so for my own mental stability I had to just cancel our ceremony at the Heritage Square Museum and figure something else out, a week and a half before our wedding date.

It’s now been over a week since that conversation took place. Kori said she would review my contract and get back to me soon (I reviewed it, it said I lose the deposit but the site fee is fully refundable). I haven’t heard from her despite emailing twice (which is stressful), though I have a lot more faith in Kori not trying to screw me over than I do in Cindy.

Kori, you are great. Cindy, re-evaluate your career path. Maybe stick with corporate catering.