South Shore Cultural Center Reviews

The staff was professional and very helpful. They enured that our needs were met. This location is an exceptional beautiful venue and a grest place for a wedding and reception. I highly recommend this venue.

We did our reception at the the South Shore Cultural Center, which is owned by the park district. South Shore is a beautiful place to have a reception. We did appetizers and dancing in the Solarium and dinner in the ballroom. The rental fee includes the tables and chairs you need, parking is free, and their staff is really great. We got a ton of compliments on the unique venue and on the view of the lake.

I have always knew I wanted to have my wedding at the South Shore Cultural center. It's so beautiful inside. It's was so big and spacious for all my guest to sit or walk around. All my guest enjoyed the view of the lakefront.

Beautiful wedding location. Janeen is excellent to work with!

Perfect venue for a large crowd. Getting logistics confirmed can be very, very difficult. If you are willing to make phone calls until someone helps you, this is the right place for you! Joshua was very helpful during planning, although he was not available during our event as he told us he would be. Space is absolutely beautiful - worth checking out for a large wedding!

We had our ceremony in the Solarium and our reception in the Dining Room. Our cocktail hour was set up in the foyer and we had a photo booth set up in the lobby. We also got ready upstairs in the Music Library and the Oak Room. The space is incredibly beautiful - our guests couldn't stop talking about how lovely the architecture is and how wonderful it was to be right on the lake. It was sometimes a little challenging to get in touch with the staff leading up to the wedding, but they were all very nice and competent people to work with and they made our wedding day spectacular. Because this location is part of the Chicago Parks District, you need a permit and the process of obtaining one is a bit bureaucratic. They have a very limited number of catering options and there's an additional tax on the catering cost that goes to the venue. At the same time, the fact that the venue already had tables and chairs was extremely convenient. The venue staff set up the ceremony and reception exactly as we asked, and everything went incredibly smoothly on the day of our wedding. The green space between the venue and the lake is public - it was really cool to see community members enjoying a lovely summer Saturday during our wedding, and we also appreciated that the staff asked people to temporarily move out of the area directly behind our ceremony for our photos. The venue is located across the street from the South Shore Metra stop (Metra Electric line), so many of our guests were able to take the train from downtown to the wedding. We would definitely recommend getting married here.

Had our wedding at the South Shore Cultural Center. Elisa responsive to emails and was overall fairly easy to work with. Though I never met her in person, she was very business like via email. The venue is absolutely great, Oren and his staff set up the place wonderfully. A couple of things to consider: parking is not included in the venue price which can add another 1000-2000 dollars or more when rented out. Also, there are many people hanging out in the park behind the cultural center, having cookouts and playing music with speakers, sometimes quite loudly. We actually couldn't hear outside music during our ceremony, and it wasn't really a disruption at all during the reception either, but as we were getting ready, it was quite loud. The Chicago Park District should not allow amplified speakers like that in public parks. A couple of the groomsmen went out to the guys playing the music and asked them to tone it down, which they did for a short period of time (during the ceremony).

We had some difficulty with SheShe, the initial event coordinator we worked with during our planning. I don't believe she works at this CPD site anymore (I think she's at Promontory Point now). Once we moved to another coordinator, the process went much smoother. However, we still had some trouble communicating with her about touch-ups to the room and for updates as to our payment. Ultimately, the site is beautiful and full of great memories for us for the rest of our lives, but the administrative side was more difficult than it should have been.

The center is beautiful; however, with it being a Chicago Parks District venue, you are limited to a short list of caterers. We were able to work with Corky's Catering, who was extremely helpful in accommodating our needs. We had some miscommunication with those on site, but Elisa was able to square things away; I'd recommend you try to keep your communication to with her, as she's the most knowledgeable and helpful. She was especially helpful when we had catering issues and had to choose another caterer--Corky's was her recommendation, and I'm extremely grateful for that!!

We had both our ceremony and reception at the South Shore Cultural Center this past August and we highly recommend this venue. The building is beautiful and spacious, and is perfect for a wedding. Both the inside rooms and the outside spaces of this venue were great; we used the Solarium and the Dining Room for our event, and held the cocktail hour partly on the patio. There is even a beach area in the back which was great for pictures.

While we loved having our wedding here and still recommend this venue there were a few issues we had. Since this is located in a public park, the park was still open during our event. We were repeatedly told, and even confirmed this on the week of, that no park visitors would be able to set up or walk behind the area that our ceremony overlooked – this was not the case. During our ceremony there were people walking behind us, visible to us and our guests. Additionally, we were not too satisfied with the communication with the South Shore staff. At times it was difficult to get a response to our questions and hard to get in touch with anyone at the office. Other than these things, our event went very smoothly and are so happy we had our wedding here!

There is not doubt that the space is gorgeous and the intricacy of the room is rich with history and old world Chicago grandeur. The aesthetic can't be matched, and I will always have beautiful photos (when they were allowed to be taken) of our wedding. The venue fee is small compared to other venues in the city, which seemingly makes it a good value. (However, the catering options they require are either expensive or extremely cheap, nothing middle of the road; we wanted a nice wedding, so we went with a catering company that was $30K for a 140 person wedding with a premium bar, chicken and salmon entree option). It had always been my dream to be married at SSCC and I was thrilled when we booked the venue. However, working with the SSCC & Chicago Park District was an absolute nightmare. Our original Event Manager was WONDERFUL, but he was promoted 3 months before our wedding, and we were never notified (tacky) until one day when I called his direct line with a question and a new person answered. The new person was fresh out of college, lacked bedside manners and HORRIBLE at her job. She confirmed key pieces of information early in the process, and then at the very end in the week leading up to the wedding, bait-and-switched things that she had confirmed, leading to unnecessary stress. She hounded us for contracts 2-3 weeks before actual due dates in an effort to be proactive and overly organized, yet in the days leading up to the wedding, she asked us again for the same information/contracts we had already sent her. She couldn't get the guest count right for days on end despite our clarifying repeatedly. It states in the contract we signed that we had up until 3 days before the event to give her a final headcount, but she made us confirm 10 days in advance. She was also frustrated that the catering company (Premiere) was dropping the ball on communication, so she CC'd us on emails to the catering team requesting final "floor plans" stating she needed that info immediately or "she couldn't guarantee she could have our room set up in time for our wedding," which was not only unprofessional, but a cheap threat that simply wasn't true. Receiving these kinds of emails mere days before the wedding created a lot of stress and undue pressure. My husband received a phone call the day before the wedding from the Park District asking "IF" we were still "planning on having our wedding tomorrow at the South Shore Cultural Center" because of a remaining balance of $137 (!!!!), due to an organizational error on HER end. We paid it immediately, but can you imagine getting a call like that the day before your wedding, when you've had guests fly in from out of town for your special wedding weekend? We almost had a stroke, once again, tarnishing what was supposed to be a fun day. The REAL kicker, however, was that she didn't show up on the day of the wedding! You read that correctly: we arrived to the space to see a security team, but no Event Manager from SSCC in sight. Our PERSONAL, day-of wedding coordinators that we had hired had to therefore help direct all the vendors during load in and load out, because there was no one present from the Park District (except for Security). I was extremely stressed and trying to not be upset in the 2 hours before the ceremony as a result. Moments before we walked down the aisle, a car pulled onto the lawn right in direct view of the bay windows which we were to stand in front of for our ceremony. Our groomsman had to go out and tell them to move. Our guests watched all of this unfold; many found it funny, but to us, it was embarrassing. This was also upsetting because we had been told by the original Event Manager that this area would be roped off by them; but because no one showed up to work that day, it didn't happen. The final nail in the coffin was when Security aggressively pulled our Photographer into his office and asked her to LEAVE at 9PM when the sun had set. The reason? FOR USING FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE BUILDING. He threatened my Photographer with fines and told her he would fine us as well if she continued to use a flash. He maintained that we needed a "special permit" to use a flash; we had NEVER been told this despite paying THOUSANDS in other permits. As a result, she had to leave because there was no way to take pictures in a dark room without a flash. So, I lost out on having a photographer for the final 2 hours of my wedding. We had to sign the marriage license in the moments after she had been kicked out, and it was a very hazy moment because we were just stunned and saddened by what had just happened. But the real gaffe is that evidently, there was NO SUCH RULE about flash photography in the building! We were informed by the Park District in the aftermath that the Security Guard did NOT have the correct information; he was under the impression that an old sign from the 1960s that hung in the Security office ("which has since been taken down") was accurate, which read "No Flash Photography Allowed." Equally insulting to all of these sucker punches is that the Park District clarified that our Event Manager was not on-site that day because "she was assigned to another event, but we DID have a different Event Manager on site that day named Theresa." Why were we not informed that this would be the case? Also, there sure as heck was no Theresa on site that day. When I told them that was absolutely NOT the case, there was NO one there by that name, Park District was unable to provide proof of a "Theresa" because "that employee no longer works for us." Chicago Park District refunded us a laughable $700, the cost of the upgraded Chiavri chairs we had paid for. Even though I had relayed all of these details to the deputy director, that was their response. It was incredibly insulting. I would say *BUYER BEWARE* if you're interested in booking SSCC. Yes, the wedding was aesthetically gorgeous, but they really drove us into the ground emotionally, and barely expressed any apology in the aftermath, despite their knowledge of all the wrongdoings. Everyone says something will inevitably go awry on your wedding day and I can understand/manage that to some extent, but the disproportionate amount of things that went wrong due to their not being organized/efficient/respectful/professional is unacceptable. I have had to go to therapy to reconcile the stress and disappointment that I was under the day of my wedding due to their negligence and BS. They stole my joy on numerous counts and as my bridesmaid said, "It was like you couldn't catch a break." It is unforgivable and I wouldn't wish working with these folks on my worst enemy. Everyone I've shared this story with has urged us to take legal action, but I'm not litigious and don't want to have the energy of suing the venue where our wedding was held. Therefore, it's a grief I'm still dealing with that I hope lessens as time goes on.