The Boathouse

We looked at a bunch of ceremony/reception sites and just fell in love with the Boathouse when we visited. It's a great building with a large covered deck and large dining area. It is located right on the river and it is a beautiful view. We enjoyed working with the staff on the day of the wedding and found them extremely helpful. Their event coordinator Jen was absolutely great and truly made our day wonderful. The only drawbacks are that it was sometimes difficult to get a hold of the staff to plan for the day and to make plans since they are a nonprofit organization that does many events in Hartford. We would have appreciated more consistent communication. Also, they require that you use one of their five vendors as a caterer, which worked out but limited us in finding a caterer. Also, the boathouse is located in a park so despite the boathouse being private property, they do not have any control over what or who is in the park. During our ceremony there was a very loud group of step dancers that was unfortunately heard during our ceremony. One another thing we did not like was that they make you buy all the drinks through their bar so we had to pay $3 per soda for our guests on top of paying the building rental fee which was quite costly. When all the other fees are considered, this place is fairly expensive however we felt it was worth it since it was so pretty. Many of our guests commented on how beautiful our wedding looked outside and inside of the boathouse.