Rankin Gardens & Atrium Reviews

We had our wedding at The Rankin, and it was an absolutely incredible experience. The venue itself is beautiful and doesn't need much decorating at all, which we loved. The staff were all so friendly and helpful from start to finish and took care of everything for us, including setting up chairs and linens along with any tables we needed. The small wedding package is a great price for what you get! The food from Classic Fare Catering was delicious and the bar was a hit. Would absolutely recommend anyone have an event here!

The Rankin was a beautiful venue for my wedding! The event coordinator, Amber was an absolute lifesaver! She was always available and made sure all of our needs were met!

This venue is so beautiful. The staff are awesome and make things go so smoothly!

The Rankin Gardens and Atrium is such a beautiful and different venue than anywhere else in Columbus! The scenery of the atrium makes for great pictures as well as a great option for rainy days, which is always a worry when hosting an outdoor event. :) Samantha was very helpful with my wedding in every way possible as well as her student staff. I would recommend this venue to anyone wanting to get married in Columbus!!

My only con is that you can't set up any decorations until the day of your event, which can become a little stressful.

- Alison Cox Rittenburg

Beautiful place to have the celebration. Dom and his team are great to work with. The location is what really sold us. To have it in Downtown Columbus where all the guests were surprised about the hidden gem in the middle of a busy small town downtown area really set up a beautiful day. Very Convenient to have everything in one place. The spaces are naturally beautiful and do not need much on the decorations side if you are doing a rustic wedding. The food has to be through ARAMARK and was delicious. Sue and her team were also amazing. All gave us exactly what we wanted and I would not have been happier going anywhere else. Only downside was that we could not bring in our own Alcohol into the venue to be served so the price of that was about the same as the food costs for 120 people.

The venue is beautiful! They only have one event on that day which is really nice. And the staff are all helpful and caring. They have options for rainy weather as well. There is plenty of space to accommodate large weddings. The downside is you can't really decorate until the day of as far as tables and aisles and things of that nature. And when you try to decorate day of you can only arrive at the venue four hours before and you are stuck waiting on tables and linens. Other than that my wedding day went pretty smoothly. Also another downside is not being able to choose your own caterer. I understand they are owned by CSU and that means we have to use CSUs caterer but it would have been really nice to have options.

Rankin Gardens and Atrium made for a very lovely wedding venue. Biggest complaints are we had to pay extra to have enough time for setting up, the coordinator we had been working with at the last minute couldn't be there and we had to work with someone else and location of public bathrooms. Overall though we are happy with how the venue worked out. Nice location in downtown Columbus, staff very friendly, helpful and efficient in setting up and flipping from ceremony to reception. Gardens, atrium and lobby very pretty and well maintained.

I loved the venue and thought it was beautiful and perfect for the type of wedding we wanted. During our 9 month engagement, the event planner position at The Rankin changed twice, so there were 3 total people in that position. This made communication sometimes slow and we just had to make sure all the information got relayed from one person to the next. The staff were mostly helpful but at times I felt a bit judged by the coordinator (who is no longer there). My wedding planner used to work at the venue so it was very helpful having her as an in-between.

The Rankin does come with items you would normally need to rent (chairs, tables, linens, plates, etc). Be warned though that the basic package only includes basic 'rentals.' It was a surprise to us, for instance, that the basic plates and silverware were disposable, so we chose to upgrade for 1.50 per person.

The Rankin will also refer you to the company that they often work with for additional rentals. Since we had a September wedding, we rented cooling fans in addition to the fans that are in the Atrium. If you go through the venue to get these items, you can save on some of the fees and they will work out pick up and drop off.

The student crew seemed to be very competent. I'm not aware of any day-of problems with set up or take down.

We (and our guests) LOVED the food from Aramark. If you go with the Rankin, you're required to use Aramark who is the caterer for CSU. Sue was very accommodating. We live out of town and had to do our tasting over the weekend. She worked with us to set up a time that would work, and when we weren't 100% satisfied with the first tasting, she set up another tasting for us. Our food at the wedding was even better than the second tasting, our guests raved about it. We ate a whiskey marinated beef tenderloin with a few different roasted veggies, salad and bread. Everything (except the bread) was gluten free.

Overall we were very happy with the experience.