Tenth Ward Distilling Company Reviews

We are so happy we went with Tenth Ward for our ceremony and reception! The space is absolutely incredible- the lighting is so amazing, and you can do so much with the space! Due to an unexpected emergency, our day of wedding coordinator was not able to be at our wedding, but Tenth Ward did such an incredible job of handling the emergency and making sure everything went perfectly. The owner, Monica, stepped in as day of wedding coordinator, and everything was smooth! As a pretty type A/control freak kinda person, I can say that they handled everything the day of the wedding perfectly. I was able to completely relax and enjoy the day without worrying about anything. They were very flexible about different things we wanted, such as having our dogs in the ceremony and providing mocktails as an option as well. Highly recommend!

This venue is so cool. It was awesome that they included a coordinator the day of as part of the rental cost.

When my now husband and I were looking for our wedding venue, we had difficulty finding something that met our criteria but didn't feel like a wedding factory. Once we toured Tenth Ward Distilling Company, we immediately knew it was the right place for us. The aesthetic was exactly what we were looking for and was a perfect fit for our 83-person, COVID-times wedding. Shelley, the Tenth Ward event manager, is an absolute professional and I always felt she had everything under control. She was able to navigate my questions swiftly, offer suggestions on areas we were unsure about, and was great in executing the details of our wedding on the day of. Our guests commented on how beautiful the space was, the quaint feel of Frederick, and the delicious cocktails. It was perfect in every way and I highly recommend the venue for anyone considering it.

I can’t recommend this venue enough! My fiancé and I always wanted a smaller wedding, and our friends let us know that Tenth Ward was hosting a pop-up wedding. From the second I contacted Amanda, to the time our wedding ended and we were walking out the door, she was on top of EVERYTHING. Amanda was super responsive to every email and phone call, she made the planning process insanely easy, and she and her team were unbelievable on the day of our wedding. The venue itself is beautiful, and I’d recommend this place over and over if I could.

We had to postpone our wedding due to COVID and we thought we would have to wait to have our wedding. Enter pop-up wedding day at Tenth Ward! We had a magical day that we will remember for the rest of our lives thanks to Amanda and the team. We could tell that everyone worked really hard to make our day unforgettable and we are so grateful. I cannot recommend this venue more.

I feel like I found a hidden gem when we booked Tenth Ward. As I was looking for Frederick venues, Tenth Ward was by far the most flexible as far as checking off the things we wanted in a venue. Once we decided on Tenth Ward, a pandemic hit and I heard horror stories from other brides about venues being terrible....not Tenth Ward. They stayed flexible and calm and worked with us to change our plans. Amanda was so helpful and great at keeping me in the loop. She always had everything under control, which put me at ease. Our guests were blown away with the beautiful space and laid back atmosphere. I can’t say enough...Monica and the rest of her staff are just good people and I can’t recommend them enough!

There is so much I could say, but If your thinking of getting this venue you should do it and get the wedding planner package too! Because Amanda is amazing. Due to COVID we had to push our wedding from July 11 to September 25. Amanda was very responsive when Covid first hit, in regards to what we wanted to do. She was literally the glue that held my wedding together and the reason it went so smoothly. The venue is beautiful and I loved that I had the option to use their bartenders while bringing my own liquor. Overall my event was everything and more. I’m very happy that I decided to go with this venue!

Amazing venue for wedding reception and cocktail hour!
The process and decision to have Tenth Ward host our Wedding reception event was beyond easy. Working with Amanda was a breeze, she was always available to answer any questions we had, no matter how small. We had multiple meetings to go over layout, timelines, and logistics, which made us feel super conformable that our day would go flawlessly, and it did. She was wonderful the day of, coordinating with our Vendors (in advance) to ensure everything was executed before the arrival of us and our guests.
I can't recommend this new, unique, space enough for any special occasion. Our guests who are from the area had no idea this space was available, and guests who were not familiar with Frederick were overly complementary of such a unique space in downtown. The historic charm, exposed brick, original floors, and modern ascetics made Tenth Ward the perfect spot. I wish we could do this day all over again!

We are very thankful to have found Tenth Ward for our Wedding and feel blessed to have had our wedding where I am certain is a place that will become a wedding venue favorite in Frederick.

VENUE: The space is awesome. A large open room upstairs makes up what they call their Whiskey Room. The large room has exposed brick all around, hardwood floors, big windows, great lighting and nice tables. The location is as good as it gets in downtown Frederick. We had a smaller wedding of 50 people which was perfect but you could certainly fit a much larger crowd.

PEOPLE: We worked with Amanda from beginning to end and couldn't be happier. She was very responsive to our questions, flexible with the details, was able to suggest vendors and really knows the area. We also used Amanda as our day of coordinator which was a huge help as it allowed us to not have to worry about the logistics of all the vendors for setup/breakdown etc. I would definitely recommend using her as a day of coordinator. We also used two bartenders from Tenth Ward and they did an awesome job as well.

Overall, Tenth Ward was a perfect location for our wedding and we really appreciated the ease of communication with the venue. There is a parking garage directly across the street which was useful for our guest, and all of our other vendors gave us great feedback on how easy it was to work at the venue. Tenth Ward has a lot of good people on board and we think it really made a difference. We highly recommend them for a wedding or other event.

We were Tenth Ward's first wedding! We knew nothing about Tenth Ward and found out about their space through word of mouth. We will NEVER regret the decision to get married here. The venue is absolutely beautiful, the location in downtown is gorgeous, and above all the team is incredible. Amanda was a breeze to work with. She was unbelievably responsive, friendly, and welcoming. She was genuinely happy and excited for us about our wedding. Amanda answered every question thoughtfully and quickly. She was flexible with my schedule and always happy to accommodate my many visits before the big day. We also hired our bartender theough Tenth Ward. HIGHLY recommend doing this! Our bartender was amazing! We'll forever be thankful that we found Tenth Ward and had the honor of being their first wedding. Go see the place. Perfect spot to start forever!

Tenth Ward was the perfect setting for our wedding vision! The perfect space for about 115 guests. We loved that we were able to have both our ceremony and reception in one spot! The Exceptional Photographer was Morgan Schrader.

We have used Tenth Ward multiple times for our team meetings and holiday parties, and I have attended many more events and meetings at their beautiful space.

The historic wedding venue is woman-owned and features wall-to-wall exposed brick, large industrial windows, and beautiful original hardwood floors. It is on the second floor and requires stairs to access but it is worth the short climb.

The staff is very responsive and easy to work with.

In addition to business meetings I know they host weddings. I am sure it would be a wonderful venue for this as well!

Our original wedding was postponed due to COVID, but Tenth Ward saved the day!! The marketing director, Amanda, was an absolute pleasure to work with. She was so flexible, positive, and supportive and even coordinated with all of our vendors way more than we could have ever expected. Amanda responded to every email almost immediately and genuinely wanted to make sure we had a wonderful time. The venue was absolutely stunning and rustic and the cocktails were amazing (as were the bartenders)!

Our original wedding was postponed due to COVID, but Tenth Ward saved the day!! The marketing director, Amanda, was an absolute pleasure to work with. She was so flexible, positive, and supportive and even coordinated with all of our vendors way more than we could have ever expected. Amanda responded to every email almost immediately and genuinely wanted to make sure we had a wonderful time. The venue was absolutely stunning and rustic and the cocktails were amazing (as were the bartenders)!

First of all, the venue space was beautiful. Our vision definitely came to life and we were happy with the overall look of the space and the vendors knowledge of it. PIGS, wildflower weddings, benefactor, and Jessi Vaughn photo were all aware of the space and great to work with, so definitely recommend them to your future couples.

Also, I want to specifically highlight Francie who is Tenth Ward's admin - she was always so prompt, communicative, worked well with our vendors, and kind - thank you Francie!!! The Reception part also went great, we got great feedback.

Now, room for improvement:
-we kind of felt like guinea pigs during the transition to in house coordination, which was a bummer. We started with one coordinator and got switched to another a few months out of our wedding. Hindsight is 20/20, but even with the selling point of having a day of the coordinator with the venue, I would’ve also liked to have hired my own since we were doing a first look and wouldn’t get to the venue until the wedding was literally starting.
-Tenth Ward's coordinator is really soft spoken, so with our big bridal party we were having a hard time hearing her for the rehearsal. Even having her mic’ed up with just a portable speaker would’ve helped. Something to keep in mind.
-the lack of a separate room for waiting for guests to arrive meant that we were seeing people and saying hello before the wedding, which was stressful. We knew this going in, but keep it in mind if staying hidden is important to you.
-all of this wasn’t so bad, but the thing that really left a sour taste in our mouths was Sunday during our event pack up. Tenth Ward's coordinator was having car trouble when we were supposed to meat her to retrieve our decor, which was understandable, but had to contact us through the groomsman as she didn’t have our phone numbers. I called her as we were packing up because there seemed to be a lot of beer, and our leftover Seaquench and 60 Minute was mixed in with a couple boxes of Monocacy beer. I asked Tenth Ward's coordinator on the phone if all the alcohol was ours, and she said yes (it was all right near our piled up bins of wedding decor and mixed with our alcohol). I even said to Mike “the liquor store must’ve run out of 60 minute and subbed Monocacy.” Monica (the owner who was communicating with me after we left and were already home and unpacked) claimed it was separated out in a different spot, but this truly wasn’t the case (and she wasn’t there the day of or morning after to confirm this). Our hired bartenders may have mixed up this alcohol and Monica kept saying "our tenth ward bartenders know to keep it separate." To that end, Tenth Ward could a) require you use their (pricier) bartenders to avoid this issue, or b) store their house wine and beer in a different location at the venue.

In my mind, it is the responsibility of the venue to keep their alcohol separate from the wedding alcohol to ensure it doesn’t get mixed up, and it really put a damper on our entire wedding to have to sort through it all to bring back maybe $100-$150 worth of beer max when it wasn’t our fault and the tenth ward coordinator wasn’t present....also bringing this alcohol back was 2 hours round trip while we were packing for our honeymoon to leave the next day. This last part of our weekend really made us feel like a transaction for Tenth Ward and like we were being accused of purposely stealing - which is a bummer since it is our only wedding.

So - long story short, I'm sure they've learned from this to keep everything separate, but it may be worth also hiring your own coordinator since you will be busy on your wedding day and setup of the space and also keeping your alcohol separate from others is the last thing on your mind.

The level of professionalism of handling the things that went wrong at our wedding was subpar. I would advise other couples to book elsewhere, we spent nearly 8,000 on this venue and the way we were treated pre contract and post contract was night and day. My husband even reached out to the owner who continued to ignore our issues with no response. We’ve waited months, and nothing. Our agreed upon timeline and contract were not followed on our wedding day, even though we paid additional for their coordinator. Your wedding is a day you can never re-do, I hope no one else has theirs affected by this business.

Hello Monica that is Blake, Sarah and I had out wedding at your establishment on October 31st 2020. There were quite a few avoidable issues that occurred that left Sarah and myself with a bitter taste. A few of the biggest are as follows. We had an issue with the fact that a full bar was served during cocktail hour when it was planned and discussed that only tenth ward cocktails beer and wine would be served, resulting in a shortage of Sarah's specialty drink. We had an issue where the food vendor fireside pizza was asked to set up and serve during cocktail hour instead of their contracted 0630pm-0830pm time frame, resulting in an unexpected stoppage of food for our guests and ourselves. We found that the wrong food items were served during cocktail hour resulting in a very high and unintended amount of food waste. But at the end of it all I think our biggest issue was the response we were met with when attempting to discuss these issues.

I understand that you run a business and when a customer has a complaint it can be easy to take it personally and jump to conclusions about what the customer is intending to receive due to said issues. But as I said before Sarah and I are trying to feel closure so that we can move on from the mistakes and look back at our big day with nothing but joy, we are not looking for handouts or freebies or compensation, in reality all we needed was a sincere apology. When we called to discuss the event Sarah and myself felt very shrugged off as we were met with a highly defensive demeanor. Whenever a concern was brought up we were met with I don't know what you want from this, or there's is nothing we can do now so this conversation isn't going to go anywhere. This was a completely different from what we expected consider how easy you and Amanda were to work with prior.

We have discussed the issues we had with other vendors and the discussion was civilized calm and left us feeling as if these businesses understood our concerns and were sincerely apologetic. The amount of resistance we met from you and Amanda just to discuss our concerns has really resonated with us leaving it hard to focus on what really matters.

Our wedding was beautiful and the parts that went right were amazing and we appreciate your business and staff for making it all possible, I understand that after the event is complete your contract is fulfilled and you owe us nothing, but when it comes down to it Sarah and myself felt that we had been wronged and when calling to clear the air the issues were amplified instead of resolved. I don't know if our business was an inconvenience or if you have never had complaints but I feel as if it could have been handled in a far more professional way.