The Carnegie Center of Columbia Tusculum Reviews

This venue was something out of my dreams. So quaint, however able to fit our wedding of around 160 comfortably. If you want something different but historic in Cincinnati, this is your place.

We LOVED our venue! It photographed so well and it was a location that was totally new to all of our guests (important to us since we've been to many weddings around Cinci). It was an awesome value, and we loved supporting a historic building that does so much for the community. Everyone here was so easy-going. A few heads up (that we ended up loving!), you will have to hire a valet company and use Jeff Thomas Catering... again we're so glad we did use both! Highly recommend... not just for weddings!

My husband and I really love this venue. It's beautiful and has it's own charm without us having to do anything to the space. We added our touch through the centerpieces and incorporated our colors through the linens. Jeff and Tiffany at Jeff Thomas Catering were wonderful to work with and they coordinated well with our wedding planner. The food was delicious and everything went off without a hitch. We're so grateful that we picked the Carnegie!

We loved this venue. We chose it because it was beautiful, unique, and historic. We appreciated that it was a venue where it would just be our wedding onsite - no running into guests from another wedding in the bathroom, etc. The venue comes with Jeff Thomas Catering. We did both the ceremony and reception here and the staff took care of the room-flip and made everything look great. The lighting in this place is fantastic! The food was wonderful and we got many compliments on it and the attentive staff. They accommodate many dietary restrictions if necessary, which made things so much easier for us and our guests. They provide the tables, chairs, china and linens, and even have a multitude of items to borrow for decorations, flowers, etc. We did have to bring in our own sound system.

Jeff Thomas coordinates the events. He was wonderful to work with through the whole process. We planned our wedding in just over 4 months so I was anxious about certain things from the start, but Jeff put a lot of those anxieties to rest and was very helpful from the moment we first met at our venue viewing. He was easy to reach when needed and responsive to emails and texts.

There were a couple of snafus that we ran into on wedding day. The staff had to come ask us some questions we had already answered prior, and at the end of the night, for clean up, the staff didn't seem to know what things were theirs and what weren't, and whether tired or frustrated, some of the staff seemed to have an attitude when asked about things that were ours that disappeared. I have a feeling this was probably a fluke though. I also didn't realize Jeff would not be onsite for the event until it was happening and he wasn't there, so we wish there was just a little better communication to the staff on those things.

Overall it was a great experience and we would recommend The Carnegie and Jeff Thomas Catering.

The Carnegie Center was such a wonderful venue for our wedding! It is a stunning building, and doesn't even need a lot of decor to really sing. Many of my guests complimented how beautiful and unique the setting was! Working with Jeff (from Jeff Thomas Catering, who pretty much runs the show there) was great. He was amazingly helpful and went out of his way to make sure everything was perfect—and it was. Even working around various dietary restrictions was no problem.

The Carnegie Center Columbia-Tusculum was the perfect venue for our wedding. We had 95 guests which allowed us to set up a separate bar area and dance floor. It is basically an empty space that you can decorate and set up as you want. They have tables and chairs you can use but everything else must be brought in separately. Jeff Thomas catering is the exclusive caterer for this venue, though, and he was able to coordinate all of our linens and place settings for us. Jeff was always very responsive and helpful with ideas, and we received numerous compliments on the food. His office staff was sometimes more difficult to deal with, but it was never anything that affected the actual day. The servers were FANTASTIC. Very attentive and on top of all of the details of the evening. I would highly recommend this venue and Jeff Thomas Catering.

The Carnegie Center was a beautiful venue and everyone complimented the venue. The service was good and was provided by Jeff Thomas. Overall, it was a great experience.

We held both our ceremony and reception at the The Carnegie Center of Columbia Tusculum and had a great experience! The space is absolutely beautiful and would still look great without a ton of decorating.

When we booked the space, we were allowed to bring in our own caterer and even our own alcohol, which is a big plus. I believe that this is no longer the case, so I can't really speak to the preferred caterer.

We worked almost exclusively with Dinese, the Executive Director. She was very flexible with times, vendors, etc. Our contract was written to include a few hours of time the day before the wedding, but since there was no event scheduled that day, Dinese allowed us to rent the space for the whole day for around $150, which was 100% worth it! Being total wedding newbies, we ended up going over our estimated set-up time the day before and break-down time the night of by about an hour each, and the person who was sent to lock up was so accommodating and it was not a big deal at all. They also sent someone to meet with our rentals vendor the following Monday so that we wouldn't need to go out of our way to be there, and wouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for weekend pickup!

The only negatives were that they didn't always respond as quickly as I would hope -- it was never enough to cause any real problems, but I know when I was planning my wedding I wanted answers ASAP! I believe the Center is a bit of a labor of love for the people who work there; you're renting a community center run by those that live in the neighborhood, not a Hilton hotel ball room (which I personally think is a plus!). However, the chain of communication also definitely could have changed since they began using a preferred caterer. Another negative is parking -- there isn't much designated parking at all, so my guests relied on street parking. I was worried about it at first, but it didn't seem to actually be a problem with the guests at all.

My husband and I absolutely fell in love with this venue and compared the other 10 spots we looked at to the Carnegie. Jeff Thomas is basically like having a wedding planner for the price of the venue/catering. The food was the best wedding food I've ever had. My guests' only complaint was that the plates weren't big enough for all the food they wanted. We were able to get in the day before and set up. Everything came together so well! The only complaint is that Jeff's assistant wasn't as responsive and had some communication trouble. She was supposed to meet me at the venue once and never showed up and made no attempt to accommodate my loss of time (I was working 3 jobs while planning this weddings, so time was so valuable). Otherwise, we had a great experience.

We had our wedding ceremony and reception at the Carnegie Center of Columbia Tusculum. We chose this space because it is BEAUTIFUL, historical, we were able to bring in our own caterer AND alcohol (a HUGE selling point since we were able to be a little more cost effective than using vendors from a preffered-caterer list as available at most other venues), and having the ceremony and reception at one location seemed most convenient for our guests (about 115). It is also very price efficient.
The actual wedding night was gorgeous and we had so many compliments.

However planning the wedding with the Event Coordinator COULD HAVE BEEN A MORE PLEASANT EXPERIENCE. Do not assume that just because you are guarunteed one hour in the venue before the night of the wedding that it'll be "rehearsal" time. We were told we could not hold our actual rehearsal at The Carnegie unless we wanted to do it at 10 AM on a Friday as they had another event that night. I understand that its a business and they can rent out their space as necessary, but they should make it more clear that rehearsal time is not included in the package. Also, the Event Coordinator was HARDLY accommodating. Her tone was always one of inconvenience and shortness. She was harsh about the rehearsal time and not apologetic about the inconvenience. My mother was not able to find some items the next day, so when she called to ask if items were left, the Event Coordinator's response was, "well, it's not really my job to look for things left behind..." No, but it is just a nice thing to do if asked by your customer.

That being said, our staff person for the night was EXTREMELY helpful and polite.

So looking back, it was a beautiful wedding and I wouldn't change a thing, I just wish we would have been treated a little bit more like a customer and not an ignorant inconvenience. It would have been a 5/5 if not for the service of the Event Coordinator.