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Ramsey S. Sent on 06/04/2023

5 out of 5 rating

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Wonderful Wedding Weekend!

21c Durham hosted a wonderful wedding weekend for my daughter & son-in-law, our family, and friends. Everything from Friday hotel check-ins to Sunday evening's wedding, cocktail hour, and reception was beyond all expectations. Trey at the front desk saved the rainy wedding day by securing a First-Look location, Jon took care of us from day one (a year prior) and Karina made every little detail perfect the day of. Axle, Brian, Amelia, and the rest of the valet crew took great care of all of our guests and helped us load in and load out. Emily took care of the room block and all guests had a seamless check-in. The tables were beautiful, the food was delicious, and the service was impeccable. Even though it rained all weekend, guests were kept warm and cozy in the Counting House and enjoyed touring the 2nd floor Art Gallery. The bridal brunch on the morning of the wedding in Gallery Five, the wedding ceremony and reception in the Main Gallery, and the Cocktail Hour in the 2nd floor Art Galleries were all so elegant and well-serviced by the staff. No little detail was overlooked. This was the first of many destination weddings coming up for our extended family and thanks to everyone at 21c Durham, we set the bar high!

Stephanie Sent on 01/05/2019

5 out of 5 rating

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Truly unique setting for our rehearsal dinner

My wife and I used 21c / The Counting House for our rehearsal dinner before our wedding. The food and service were both great, and the staff was very accommodating with the space, letting us play our own music and a slideshow during the dinner. Bar staff were fun and made some great drinks. The art on display was kept our guests talking and entertained throughout the night. Definitely check out the old vault in the basement too, it’s a really cool and unique area. Thank you 21c!

Charlene C. Sent on 01/17/2019

5 out of 5 rating

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Great experience all-around

My husband and I looked at venues across NC, from Asheville to the beach. After researching 100+ venues and doing site-visits at almost 20 places, we were ready to postpone because we couldn't find anything we both loved for the price point we needed. Then someone recommended we look at 21c in Durham. I am forever grateful to the friend that suggested it. We had a beautiful wedding! I chose not to hire a wedding planner because it's so costly but I was concerned about all of the potential coordination. As far as the venue, they were so accommodating that I didn't need a coordinator for that piece. Even when other things that happened like last minute guest changes, a change of entertainment requiring more space, etc., Tracy from 21c made it work and took so much stress off of me. It truly was a great experience all-around.

+4 photos

Jessica Sent on 04/26/2018

5 out of 5 rating

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Our wedding at the 21C Durham was beyond everything we had hoped and planned for! The staff was professional, accommodating, and helpful at every turn. There were so many venues in the area with hidden costs and piles of rentals necessary and we were blown away by the straight forward and easy process with the 21C. Many of our guests were out of town and the ease of the venue was perfect - guest room block was managed incredibly, ceremony in the main gallery, cocktail hour in the curated museum, and back to the main gallery for dinner and dancing. They managed a bridal breakfast, special touches for my husband and I throughout the day, and courteous and professional staff at every corner of our event! Not the mention the incredible food from The Counting House. My husband and I visited in the summer for a birthday dinner where they recognized us as booking an event, we spoke to the chef, and he remembered not only meeting us when our tasting time came - but he recalled my food allergies as well. Top notch service! Thank you to the 21C for making our wedding so memorable!

+4 photos

Claire Sent on 12/08/2017

5 out of 5 rating

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This venue is EVERYTHING! I held my wedding there and I got so many compliments on it. The reception hall was breath taking and required very little decorating. The art gallery where we held cocktail hour was held made it easy for guests to mingle and talk about the art. Everyone thought the bathrooms were a hoot. My pictures are going to forever reflect our relations unique style because our backdrop of the venue was amazing. The food was unreal good and we got the cheapest buffet option available. They even made up a special dish just for the wedding. We rented the penthouse suite as the bridal suite and it was perfectly sized to get 9 bridesmaids and me in makeup and hair done. I really can’t enough about how much we enjoyed our wedding here!!

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21c Museum Hotel's reply:

Claire,

Your wedding was EVERYTHING! Thanks so much for the awesome review. It was such a pleasure hosting your celebration and we're still swooning over the photos.

Cheers!
21c Durham

Cecily Sent on 03/11/2017

5 out of 5 rating

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I NEVER give 5 Stars across the board, but the staff and facilities @ 21C were over the TOP! Listen to their advice about wedding vendors - they have terrific local partnerships. The food is farm to table and our guests couldn't stop raving about it. The modern art is everywhere you turn, so your photography will be beyond special. Outstanding service from the planning all the way through the event/reception was stellar - top notch.

21c Museum Hotel's reply:

Thank you so much for your review! We love our couples and making their days memorable. We agree the contemporary art makes for the best photos!

Cheers!
21c Durham

User2737208 Sent on 08/22/2016

5 out of 5 rating

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21c is many steps above all the rest. Eclectic, modern artsy fun captivating. If you want a very different type of venue to impress your guests and have them leave wanting to come back for more THEN 21c is the venue for you. Chef prepared meals, farm to table, flexibility and amazing great culinary dishes that leave you wanting a doggie bag to bring home to saviour the taste for the next day. The staff is super attentive and made our guests feel extra special. Our event surpassed our biggest expectations and is still being talked about by our guests that were blown away by the whole romantic intimate ambience (vault for drinks, Museum for canapes, ballroom for dinner). Can't say enough because the staff is just as great as the food and as the intimate atmosphere that surrounds. Thanks 21c for making our day so AMAZING

Roscoe H. Sent on 06/09/2019

4.8 out of 5 rating

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Linea is a Boss!

None of it would have been possible without Linea, the event manager, at 21C. When we first met her we knew we were in good hands. She stayed in touch regularly while designing the menu and table layout in the space. She took care of everything perfectly during the pre-ceremony, cocktail hour, and room flip. She addressed any issues without needing to add more stress to our busy day.

Bill Sent on 03/09/2017

4.8 out of 5 rating

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If you event is int he 80 - 120 number of wedding guests, the 21c team are just great pros at what they do. Great venue. Food and drink were raved about by our guests. Every question or service need we had was quickly and expertly responded to by the 21c team.

Angie Sent on 11/13/2016

4.6 out of 5 rating

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We loved having our wedding at 21C Museum Hotel. While the initial booking, etc. was a little difficult due to changing staff, once things got set and we began working with Eli (room blocks) and Celia (event manager), everything went very smoothly. Communication was a little slow, but we always received answers to all of our many questions within a week or two. Our guests LOVED the venue. It is so unique to the Durham area and it was so fun to be surrounded by art (and pink penguins!). The food was DELICIOUS and the day went off without a hitch. Our guests were so impressed with the venue and how unique it was. Truly the best day and I am so happy with our decision to hold this important day here.

Anita Sent on 01/20/2018

4.4 out of 5 rating

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We got married at 21c Durham the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The food was AMAZING. The main gallery space for the ceremony and reception were beautiful, and the acoustics in the main gallery space were suprisingly great. We loved how cocktail hour was upstairs in the art gallery space. The art installation had recently changed, and we felt that it really fit both of our personalities. Our guests were mainly from out of town and they LOVED the venue too. We could not have asked for anything better. The only drawback was that there was a fair amount of turnover in terms of who was in charge of event planning, so it would take a while to get a response in regards to our questions.

Emma Sent on 08/27/2016

4.3 out of 5 rating

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21c is a great venue for a couple looking for something a bit quirky, but maintaining class. See below for pros and cons, but keep in mind that I would totally choose them again if I had the choice. Definitely a dream wedding. :)

Pros:
-Food is absolutely incredible. Truly amazing. And they are very flexible with the menu!
-Venue location is convenient since there is a free parking garage right by and in the heart of downtown.
-Tons of stuff to see inside the hotel/museum. A huge crowd pleaser.
-Hotel suites are great and perfect for getting ready the day of.

Cons:
-Pricey
-Provided chairs are office chairs and are not wedding-ish at all. The chairs were an absolute "no" for me, so I had to rent different chairs (another cost). This is a common complaint they get from my understanding.
-Have to hire a day-of wedding coordinator (added cost) as they do not provide one.

Jennifer Sent on 03/06/2017

3.9 out of 5 rating

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21C was an amazing venue! My wedding and reception were absolutely beautiful and the Main Gallery's natural beauty was a highlighting factor. The only issues I experienced were long waits for responses and my cake was barely cut. They charge a $150 cake cutting fee, but we brought a whole layer untouched and over half of the layer they did cut back home. I would much rather my guests got the chance to enjoy instead of having to toss it all.

Other than that, AMAZING venue! I would have my wedding and honeymoon night here again in a heartbeat.

21c Museum Hotel's reply:

Jennifer,
Thank you for hosting your celebration with us at 21c Durham! We're happy to hear about your positive experience. With regards to the cake, we typically cut it as needed so slices do not go to waste and the couple can save what remains. Our apologies that this was not what you envisioned as we certainly don't want to keep anyone from enjoying cake!

Cheers!
21c Durham

Angela Sent on 05/11/2017

3.8 out of 5 rating

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21c was a beautiful venue, and we had our cocktail hour in the 2nd floor gallery and our reception in the main gallery. My husband wanted a space with a more modern (rather than rustic) feel, so 21c became a clear choice as we visited other venues. It is definitely on the pricier side of venues in the area, but we felt that it was mostly worth it. Our guests were impressed with the modernity of the venue, and really enjoyed the gallery and the vault. Our guests also raved about the food. 21c was super accomodating in that aspect, and even our guest with an egg allergy had something delicious to eat. My vegetarian friends kept on telling me how much they appreciated the veggie options we had.

We also got ready at 21c, and those made for beautiful photos. Our wedding block was at 21c, and Marissa was exceptional. Eli was helpful as well, but I had more interactions with Marissa and she was very very responsive and attentive.

I will echo the other reviews in that communication was difficult. We had three different event managers over a 10 month period, and our last one suddenly quit. We were not notified about her departure until I called the hotel one month before our wedding day. We did have our second sales manager, Celia, back again. Celia was helpful, professional, and flexible with our requests, but we generally heard from her anywhere between a few days to a week. We did have to rent other chairs for the space instead of the black office chairs that are included. There was some confusion amongst the staff in terms of the rental company picking up the chairs, but Celia was able to handle the situation without my having to worry too much about it.

In the end, my husband, our guests, and I had an enjoyable time at 21c. We agreed that we would not want our reception anywhere else, and would go back to 21c again though we would be prepared for some patience with communications.

21c Museum Hotel's reply:

Angela,
We loved hosting your special day! Thank you for choosing 21c Durham for your celebration and for your constructive review. We appreciate you taking the time to provide detailed feedback as it plays a vital role in our improvement.

Cheers!
21c Durham

Adam Sent on 05/17/2021

3.4 out of 5 rating

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More Stressful Than Needed

We really wanted to have a great experience with 21C, but at most times we felt the hotel underperformed and made things more stressful. It started at the beginning when we tried to tour the hotel for our actual ceremony. The person who agreed to meet us (an events manager) never showed and they scrambled to find someone to take us on a tour. The hotel room sales manager gave us a tour but was unable to answer basic questions about how the logistics of the wedding would work. From there we chose a different venue but did choose 21C for our hotel block since the rooms are nice, reasonably priced, and the location is great. Even before the pandemic hit, the point of contact we had was very friendly but the booking system (calling, no link) gave us issues and there were errors in the room block list. Then, the pandemic hit. Fast forward a year and we've moved our room block. The hotel failed to notify us that they were holding a deal that basically undercut our room block contract. After releasing us from that, they moved rooms booked via the deal or other booking means on to our block for tracking purposes. However, the updates we got were never accurate. Names were dropped without reason, room reservation numbers were off, etc. We were in near daily contact with the hotel over careless errors in their reservations. They seemed able to search rooms by name to add in, except they missed names, requiring to track down guests' confirmation numbers. During the actual weekend, things ran fairly smoothly and they did a good job distributing wedding welcome bags and the staff were all friendly and professional. However, when we left, the hotel overcharged us by hundreds of dollars, a reminder that the people were friendly, the rooms were nice, but the software and reservations process they have is woefully inadequate and caused much more stress than needed.

Marissa Sent on 12/23/2016

2.7 out of 5 rating

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21c offers a beautiful and unique space for weddings. It is more expensive than the average venue in this area, but the food is good and the Main Gallery is gorgeous. The art is unique and changes every six months or so. The hotel rooms were very comfortable for our guests and 21c graciously upgraded our rooms whenever possible. They also sent a gift of strawberries and champagne to my room the morning of the wedding.

Unfortunately, 21c has a long, long way to go before being a customer-oriented business. My husband and I experienced serious issues with 21c staff throughout our planning process, and received poor service and communication from almost everyone we interacted with, ranging from the GM to the sales people. After voicing concerns numerous times over our 12 month engagement, we received a lot of promises but very little follow-through. There was a lot of unnecessary stress and tears shed on my part, which is a shame. All of our other vendors were fantastic.

Luckily, we had a wonderful wedding day and the day-of coordinator, Celia, did a great job.

However, the day after our wedding, 21c experienced "credit card authorization" issues which resulted in my credit card being charged twice in sums totaling $5,600, with no warning at all. The charges were ultimately reversed but it was incredibly frustrating to have that sum of money being held on my credit card when I needed to finalize payments with my other vendors.

In conclusion, our wedding day was fantastic, but people considering 21c should decide for themselves if the stress and heartache is worth it.

21c Museum Hotel's reply:

We truly enjoyed celebrating with both of you and do appreciate all of the comments that you’ve shared. Please know that this information is very important to us, and we have certainly made changes to ensure that our couples enjoy the entire process from booking to hosting an event at 21c.

Many Thanks,
21c Durham

Sydney Sent on 05/24/2017

2.1 out of 5 rating

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I love the venue itself with the changing art galleries plus the Main gallery is gorgeous. The price of the venue is comparable to others in the Durham area. We experienced some horrible service from the staff, they changed out event coordinator 3 times, but didn't tell us.I would be contacting one and they would tell me they were no longer in charge of working with me but it was another person, who had taken the job a few weeks ago but never contacted me. It would take up to a week or longer to get a response to an emails.They never returned any of my calls except when I went to the corporate level. They handled the wedding as if it was any other event instead of one that is highly emotional giving standard hotel responses to questions.

They made several big errors among many small ones. One was booking another event in the wedding space that would have ended two hours before our wedding, even though I had it in writing that we would get the room by 10 am for set up. We found this out two weeks before the wedding in an email. I had to go to the corporate level to get anyone to respond to me and fix this issue.
They also could not guarantee a room for the bride to get ready in up until the day of the wedding. They told me on rehearsal night they still did not have the room for me to get dressed in.

When they were flipping the room from ceremony to reception the staff ended up getting some of my family members and guests to help put out tables and decor. This is unacceptable!

They changed items on the menu we selected and we didn't find out until the dinner was being served. This was very disappointing.
Now some of these things they made up for by working with me but there were many tears and it was a lot more stress then was necessary.
Over all if you are willing to be on top of them in making sure they follow up then go for it the art galleries are amazing plus the vault was very nice for the groomsmen to get ready in.

21c Museum Hotel's reply:

Hi Sydney,

Thanks so much for sharing your experience on WeddingWire.

We are so sorry for the communication errors. We did have some turnover that negatively affected our communications during the planning of your event. Thankfully, that was a temporary issue but of course does not make up for your lasting impression.

We also would like to apologize for the continued negative perception. We made every effort we could to recover in the moment. Training, communication, and execution are key to a successful event and we are sorry that we missed the mark.

Very kindly,
21c Durham

Olivia M. Sent on 10/21/2023

2 out of 5 rating

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Just go elsewhere

I would not get married here. If you choose to do so anyway, I would NOT use their catering, their bartenders, or their staff. I would hire outside vendors. The venue coordinator will not make an appearance on the day of your event, or assist with anything. The bartenders were extremely rude to me (the bride) and our guests and kept leaving the bar unattended.

The worst part is that venue will make you 20 promises and not even fulfill 10. If you have guests with dietary issues and order special plates for them, they will never receive them and will not get to eat. The buffet was completely unattended and kept running out of food, so it took our guests (60 people) over an hour to get their food. Once all of our guests were able to get their plates, the staff LITERALLY started taking their plates from them as they were still eating. Many guests said they felt rushed and couldn’t believe people were grabbing their plates as they were actively eating. The cost per plate is very expensive so the fact that many of our guests didn’t get more than 5 minutes to eat is absolutely egregious. We were not in a rush, but the staff was acting like they were trying to hurry up and get us out, even though we had the venue until 11, and it was 7 pm.

The hotel was also a mess. Our room keys stopped working several times on our wedding day and we were repeatedly locked out of our suite. And if you call the front desk and ask for towels, or anything, you can be sure you will never receive it. We also ordered lunch in advance for myself and the bridesmaids to come around noon, and it came around 2, when we had to be dressed and ready so we didn’t get to eat, and the food we did eat was cold.

Overall, it sucked. The 21c messed up a lot. They forgot a lot. Dinner was a mess and your event does not matter. The staff makes it clear they want you out. I am heartbroken at how much money was spent on a reception in which our guests were unable to eat and the staff was despicable. Just go elsewhere.

21c Museum Hotel's reply:

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your candid feedback about your experience here at 21c. We know our team has already been in touch off-line to address your concerns, but we are also grateful for the opportunity to apologize and acknowledge those issues here, too. Although this was a shared disappointment, we truly appreciate the gracious feedback which enables us to implement long-lasting, corrective improved action on our part. We have since instituted relevant changes on our end to ensure that our future couples have a seamless wedding celebration.

Thank you again for the time, and we hope to see you back in the future.

Jessie Sent on 07/11/2017

1.3 out of 5 rating

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1.5 out of 5 rating

I had my wedding guests stay here, and we used the hotel as a home-base for my wedding weekend. Unfortunately, several guests complained of poor service, erroneous room charges, and excessive construction noise.

Further, at least three guests had money stolen from their rooms. I know this happens, but what shocked me was management's total lack of response in handling the issue. They ignored complaints and played the run-around with guests that followed up on the issue. After a month, only one guest continued to follow up doggedly- she was finally put in touch with someone who addressed the problem. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. No one has time to follow up week after week trying to speak with someone regarding theft. I cannot recommend this venue. Why add incompetent management to your list of potential wedding weekend worries?

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