Venue for 50 guests or less

Look into local parks, vfw halls and churches. Many parks will have larger gazebos or rec halls on them that rent for cheap.

You could also try dance studios! A lot of them have big beautiful rooms with hardwood floors.

Also, join your local Facebook wedding swap page. Mine has tons of brides on it, and you can normally ask around for what kind of venue you’re looking for, and they’ll pop out great suggestions for you.

Smaller hotels could be a good option too. You may be able to find one that has a half ballroom you could rent so that it’s not as expensive as the full ballroom and they’ll let you do less people.

Were twins!!! March 30th 2019 I will be getting married and 60 guests congratulations!!!

Hi! I’m actually in the same area, and have a similar guest count, so went thru the EXACT same thing...
We landed on a winter (off season) wedding date and that seemed to get us a bit more flexibility than we would have gotten otherwise.
We wound up booking ThunderHawk Golf club- which is about an hour north of chicago.

I had originally said I didn’t want standard golf club/country club but this particular venue is beautiful with wood beams and high ceilings and huge windows. It didn’t read banquet hall to me. And they worked with me when others would not. While I think they normally have higher minimums in peak season, they gave me a lot of flexibility and I think my minimum landed on 50 people (we have about 65 invited, including the bridal party).
I think the key to this was that they are otherwise closed in winter months, so some business is better than no business. The manager there was really nice and Agreed to let us bring in our own cake (something important to me), and even discounted the package rate because their package includes a cake from a local bakery.
The location is owned by the lake county park district so even though it’s lovely it’s cost to entry is not as high as other country clubs.
So I guess the moral of the story is to maybe look at Park district and golf clubs that are closed during the winter for the season, your day may be still off-season, and see if they’ll give you the same flexibility my venue gave me. On the other hand if an hour north of Chicago is within your geographic range I would check out Thunderhawk. 😉

The Embassy Suites by Hilton in Rosemont has a lovely wedding package with catering options accessible online and, to my knowledge, has several sizes of event space. I imagine that you would be able to negotiate a smaller event space. Best of luck!

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These are great suggestions.

Just keep in mind, you don't actually have a date until you have a venue. I know lots of people who had a date in mind and spread the word then had to change it because of the availability or pricing of the venue they found.

Happy planning!

I don't know if Rockford Illinois is too far for you, but Midway Village can handle 125 max so 50 people sounds right up their alley. Really cool place, just not big enough for my wedding.

Chapel in the Pines located in Sycamore Illinois is where we chose to have our small wedding. They will do any party size.

Open Table has a list of restaurants with private rooms. You can search by type of food, number of guests, neighborhood and BUDGET.

https://www.opentable.com/private-dining?m=3

Don't despair! You might still be able to get one of the venues you looked at. Call them and ask them them about their costs and min guest count for:

* Sunday morning (brunch) or early evening wedding (dinner)

* Mon-Thur night wedding

* Off-season months/rates

* Elopement packages (may be for less than 20 guests but just so you know your options)

Venues often have 100+ guest minimums on weekends but not during the week, morning weddings, off-season, etc!!!

Before you book the venue, check with your VIP guests/family to see if they can go on the dates you're considering. We got our dream venue by choosing a Monday night, off-season. Because we cut the list cut from 40 to 15 to make it happen we checked with our guests to make sure they would go/take the time off from work because it was a DW--they all said yes!