Pacific Asia Museum

The outside courtyard is simply the most unique, magical, and gorgeous place for a small sized wedding reception (92 people or less is optimal) in the evening. It is soooooo not the mundane reception venue swathed in pastel fabrics and uplighting. In the daylight it is also very pretty but not as high impact. It comes complete with a koi pond, rock garden, and nice antique stairwells, and is shielded from wind on all four sides.

We had our wedding just now in March. I was afraid it was going to rain but luckily it did not, missed it by about 10 hours... and I am so glad I did not have to move it inside! There is not that much room for a dance floor so we simply did not have one, and it turned out just fine. One could conceivably move the buffet tables out of the way and have plenty of dance space, but there is not much point in dancing in a rock garden... best to go with the theme and keep it classy. I can't wait for the professional photos to come back - it was so unbelievably gorgeous, you would not even have to have extravagant centerpieces (though we did because I was being a bridezilla).

It is a bit on the moderate to pricey end of things but oh-so-worth-it, and the money would be going towards supporting the museum. Compared to other rentals it is probably slightly above average but you get so much ambiance with some hanging lanterns. We paid for 5 hours of time (1 hr setup, 1 hr cocktail, 3 hrs dinner/reception) at 2008 pricing which ended up being around 2K. It costed an extra $1200 for a full set of lanterns and ambient lighting with a company that the museum prefers to use (but this is optional, and you can decide to go with fewer lanterns).

Gabriella who is the coordinator at the museum is very professional, will answer all your questions (works Wed - Su) and try to accommodate special requests. With her help we were able to sneak past our guests, totally unseen, into the upstairs area and make our grand entrance from one of the staircases.

Now I just have to go check out the museum itself when I have time... so many interesting historical artifacts. I would have bought our guests entry fees into the museum, but there was not enough time in the reception for people to go milling about.