MIT Faculty Club

My wedding ceremony and reception were at the MIT Faculty Club, and overall I was very satisfied with the entire process. Nina, the wedding coordinator at the faculty club is truly fantastic to work with -- she is responsive, professional, and very sweet.

The food served by the club was top-notch (one of my friends called it the "best wedding food ever", and this is a woman who attended 9 weddings this summer), with fresh ingredients and a familiar yet unique menu that they are willing to personalize. The club added cabbage to our main courses upon request and allowed us to bring in and serve pastries/desserts that were special for my family culturally. They also special-ordered a hard-to-find alcohol for our toasts. I did a lot of research to find a wedding location in the Boston metro area (a majority of our guests were from out-of-town, so having a subway-accessible wedding was a priority for us) that was classy and clean, yet not crazy expensive. Well, most places that are nice-looking turned out to be insanely expensive, making the MIT Faculty Club a very good deal. Unlike most venues, they don't charge more or have large minimums on Saturday nights or holidays.

Although the club has a business-like feel when you first go visit, the feel at our reception and ceremony was completely different - the room transformed beautifully (I recommend uplighting). Plus, the club features a breath-taking view of the Charles River and downtown Boston, which adds charm of the location.

We did have a few issues with obtaining chairs for the ceremony and reception (I was surprised to find that if we didn't want to use the club's default chairs, we had to order very-pricely chairs for the reception and separate chairs for the ceremony), but since our wedding they have upgraded the chairs to really nice ones. Also, Nina was professional and friendly throughout the entire chair fiasco and was willing work with us on figuring out a solution.

Another positive about the MIT Faculty club is that if they don't have an event before yours, you are free to decorate and go in and set things up. AND you get the club to yourself on the day-off. There is no crazy 1-hour time limit for setting up and other strict rules that I found at many other venues I saw. They also allowed us to give out personalized beer as a wedding favor (this was a big deal to us), which for some reason was not allowed at some other crazy puritanical vendors we visited.