Hillyer Art Space Reviews

We hosted our recent wedding welcome reception/rehearsal dinner at Hillyer and the space and Hillyer team were PERFECT! Emily was so sweet, accommodating, and even helped us set up and clean up at the end of the night. She went above and beyond her duties which we really appreciated. The only catering restriction was no red wine of course so they were very flexible especially in terms of use of the space. And the space itself is gorgeous. I highly recommended Hillyer for any kind of reception or event!

We held our wedding cocktail reception at Hillyer Art Space and it was absolutely perfect! The art on the walls provided a conversation piece for our 100 guests and many people commented on how neat the space was for a wedding reception. Allie was wonderful to work with and we appreciated her timely responses and communication style. Definitely check out this small, local art gallery for your event!

We had a lovely reception here in May 2016. It is very DIY - they have some chairs and tables, but most everything needs to be brought in by you/the caterer. Our guests loved the art and it was more than spacious enough for our 60+ guests to have room to dance, eat, socialize. They let us come check out the space outside of normal gallery hours - which was super helpful for my schedule. They have limitations on some beverages (no red wine) and food (not super saucy) in order to protect the unframed artwork, but are otherwise very accommodating. For the price we could not have found a better space that let us bring in our preferred caterer and provided a wonderful atmosphere! Thank you for a great space!

I got married at the Hillyer Art Space in Sept. 2014. Nice space, very DIY. Their event coordinator was very helpful for the whole planning process. We had no trouble setting up and taking down everything for the wedding, and for the most part things went relatively smoothly. We appreciate how accommodating she was when we had questions or scheduling difficulties.

However, our wedding itself is what brings this review down so much. The Hillyer told us about 3 weeks before the wedding that they we also hosting a large public DC-wide event right after our event (Art All Night) and they did not foresee how it would impact our wedding. In fact, dozens (my mom swears near 100) of people ended up crashing our wedding on Saturday night, in large part because they thought I (the bride) was performance art or part of a show. Many more were turned away at the door. Much of our wine and food was actually taken by people wandering in off the streets. Every few minutes I personally had to escort someone out. The most frustrating part was during my father’s wedding toast – a man walked into the room and directly in front of my dad during his toast (arm’s length), to come watch the speech. It was completely ridiculous. This could have been mitigated by the Hillyer staff with presence at the door rather than my cousins acting like bouncers.

I also talked to some people who were very confused as to why the marketing and ads for the Art All Night event did not specify that the Hillyer would be closed for a private event until 11pm. There was only one small sign on the door that said “Private Event” and with no details describing the fact that a wedding was taking place. The one staff person on site was only helpful about halfway in when we complained that so many strangers were interrupting. All in all, it was extremely frustrating to have to deal with this. We got NO response when we tried to follow up with their staff to discuss afterwards.TREAD VERY CAREFULLY.