The Hoff Center is gorgeous! All the natural light and exposed brick were perfect for our wedding photos. The layout worked great, we had our ceremony and reception at the Hoff Iowa West venue for about 160 guests. The getting ready space was great for our wedding party, and it made things so simple to just have everything at the same venue. Our day was so perfect and fun, Bitsy and her team were incredible, both during the planning process as I had questions, and with how they kept things moving smoothly behind the scenes on the day of! 10/10, would highly recommend!! :)

I promise it'll be the best decision you make throughout the entire wedding planning process. We toured several venues and didn't find a single one that even came close to The Hoff's level of beauty, flexibility and professionalism.

It's a restored historic building, so there's a lot of beautiful exposed brick and modern updates like a gorgeous bar area. Because it's a performing arts venue and ballets and performers come through regularly, they have an awesome dressing room set up for the bride that you can utilize so long as you're not getting married the weekend of a show (which they give you full heads up on when you're choosing your date). The guy's room is less flashy, but it's still awesome to be able to get ready on-site. You get full use of the whole building on the day of your wedding, including the art gallery upstairs (which is elevator accessible). It was cool for our guests to go meander through the gallery during our cocktail hour and then come back down when it was time for dinner. We also took some of our couple portraits in the gallery which was cool and unique.

There's a rental fee for the space of course, but no mandatory bar minimum. We were able to set our own cost for that based on our knowledge of our guests which was a really big deal for us. We didn't want to pay a crazy high bar tab upfront when we knew there was no way our guests would even come close to hitting it. This was the only venue we came across that had that flexibility in letting us set the bar tab where we wanted and it was a huge selling point.

The BEST part about The Hoff is the staff. Bitsy Metzger is your main point of contact and she is the absolute best. She makes sure everything runs smoothly on the day and does everything she can to accommodate your requests and make adjustments to fit your vision. We met with her a couple of times before the wedding and every time I walked away feeling so confident about putting our big day in her hands. Bitsy is also backed up by a great staff. Initially, we were a little unsure about having our wedding 'staffed' at all. Couldn't we just ask family to pitch in and save a few bucks? In the planning process, you're always trying to pinch pennies. But our love for the space and Bitsy's professionalism won out and thank goodness it did. If I had to do it all over again I would've paid the staff double just to make sure they were there. It was such a HUGE relief for our families not to have to work during our wedding and clean up after our guests or set out chairs or deal with vendors or light/blow out candles or set up the buffet or kick everyone out at the end of the night or the million other little things that need done at a wedding. Our families were able to just enjoy themselves and The Hoff staff made that possible. I did a lot of planning for the day, and the staff executed everything to perfection and I am immensely grateful for them. PLUS they were just fun to be around! They danced while they set tables and memorized my guest's drink orders (which I'm still getting compliments on). They had smiles all night and added to the fun, loving energy of the night.

I wouldn't change a single thing about my experience with The Hoff, they made our day so wonderful. And because it's a public space that holds events and shows, my new husband and I can keep coming back for years to come and reminisce in the space where we said "I do."

Our experience was absolutely wonderful! Bitsy was so so helpful with every small question I had and was so flexible with my timeline, decor, and vision for my wedding. The staff allowed my wedding party to do a minimal amount of work and took such good care of us from the beginning of the day! The spaces to get ready worked so well for our wedding party, and the venue is absolutely gorgeous. I genuinely cannot say enough good things about having our wedding here!