Park Hotel Reviews

The Park Hotel (Top of the Park) was the best decision we could've made - not only does it showcase the most beautiful view in Madison, but the staff exceeded our expectations. Their wedding coordinator Jaclyn was everything we needed and more, and she made our day so special. I didn't have to worry about a thing. The food and guest accommodations were also top notch. I couldn't recommend them more!

Our experience with the Park Hotel was amazing. Everything went as we hoped it would, and Jackie was an excellent coordinator and kept everything moving as planned.

It's an easy choice with Best Western Premier Park Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin. There is a beautiful view of the Capitol and a beautiful view of the lake. The room at the Top of the Park is gorgeous and speaks for itself.

The best part of our wedding experience at the Park Hotel was working with Alice Weisner and her team. She was very patient, listened to what our vision was, offered great suggestions on the amount of food and was a calming voice as we got closer to the wedding date.

It was a GREAT night and one we will never forget.

Lisa Fox and Bill Chadwick - wedding date 09/08/2023

Park Hotel’s staff did a great job making us feel welcome and special. We greatly appreciate the staff and their hard work. Everyone was friendly and helpful. Thank you!

We had the most amazing experience with the Premier Park hotel. They were so attentive and responsive. They cared about our wants for our big day and were flexible and welcoming! We wouldn’t choose anywhere else to have our ceremony and reception.

We had our 12/31/21 New Year's Eve wedding at the Park Hotel and had a wonderful experience. From the moment we reached out, the event staff were responsive, organized, and easy to work with. They were incredibly flexible with their wedding packages to allow us to host the wedding exactly how we planned and the staff was SO accommodating. Every person we interacted with was kind and helpful. The day of the wedding, they worked seamlessly with our day-of-coordinator and the food was delicious! Their event spaces are lovely, and the Top of the Park has iconic capitol views that are beautiful day or night! I would highly recommend the Park Hotel to any couple looking for an elegant, classic, downtown Madison wedding.

Photos below by Katie Ricard Photography

We had the absolute best experience celebrating our special day at the Premier Park Hotel. Their wedding coordinator, Ali, was so helpful and detailed and was able to accommodate almost every request. She was very responsive to every email and phone call and had a great attitude. The venue is beautiful and there was a lot of flexibility in the space to set up how we wanted. Our ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, and brunch was hosted at the hotel and it was a very seamless experience. Every member of the staff was so helpful the day of to make sure everything ran smoothly. The overall price for the space was extremely reasonable. Food and drink costed more than we would have liked but that was due to open bar... and a lot of Wisconsinites! Overall great experience and would do my wedding all over again with this space and team.

Elaina has been wonderful with every planning detail! I would have been last without her, she has so much experience and knowledge I probably would have forgotten important things. Our package for the event had so many wonderful perks, I'm looking forward to the evening but I will be so sad when it's over!

Our daughter had her wedding reception at the Best Western Inn on the Park in Madison this July, 2014. The wedding coordinator, Elaina, was a super star!!! She was invaluable to making our daughter's wedding the beautiful success that it was! She was always helpful and willing to work with us to accomplish our vision for the big day. Hotel rooms were nice and spacious with great views. Food at the reception was some of the best we have ever had at a wedding!! Top of the Park was amazing for the cocktail hour. The views of the Capitol were spectacular! Reception hall was also perfect! Location was great for our out of town guests who got to enjoy the various restaurants and bars in the area. Had a wonderful brunch the day after the wedding at the top of the Inn which was a spectacular view of the city. So glad we came here! Would recommend to anyone interested in a super wedding reception location with a one in a million wedding coordinator!!

Netta and the catering staff of Inn on the Park did an amazing job with our wedding reception. The service was amazing and the food was excellent. Everything was served hot and on time. They were also very good about not serving dinner or wine while speeches were going on. I've been in weddings at other places that have served while people were talking and it seemed distruptive...Inn on the Park was great with this! We had our reception there and a morning brunch the day after. The service staff was very attentive. Our catering manager was very good about not approaching us (the bride and groom) with any problems...If there were any, which I don't think there were...she talked to my personal attendant about it. Many people that attended our wedding said it was the best steak they ever tasted. They were also very helpful and accomodating during the planning process and we were able to meet as many times as we needed.

The Park Hotel was still working to get back to full staffing post-Covid when we had our wedding which meant they were a little less responsive than they might otherwise be; however, they were very accommodating and our view from the Top of the Park could not be beat (a sunny day with the Capitol under a fresh coating of snow while ice boats were flying across Lake Monona). Overall, we looked at quite a few venues in Madison and we think the quality and value of the Park cannot be beat.

We choose Park Hotel after looking at quite a few venues around Madison. The view of the capital building from the 8th floor sold us, and went on to wow our guests during cocktail hour! Kayla Bostic was wonderful to work with, she provided great guidance throughout the planning process and made things so simple. The staff on the wedding day were all excellent with timely set-up and great service to all our guests. The only downside is they no longer offer ceremonies on-site, so we had to find a different location which added costs to our initial budget, but we loved our ceremony site as well and everything turned out fine in the end.

No complaints, easy to work with and very flexible. Allowed us to have it how we wanted. Everyone loved their food!

Wonderful! We have no complaints about this location. The food was AMAZING!

We really enjoyed having our reception at Inn on the Park and Elaina was great to work with to plan details.

While we were overall happy with the reception, there were some issues getting guidance with food selection, the food was not hot, and there were issues with getting the sound/music set up as the reception was starting. The staff was all very nice. The coordinator is new to her job there and hopefully these issues will improve. We spent much more than we expected to.

I love love love this venue, it is beautiful. They promised a wedding coordinator, however, with the package we booked. Throughout our time we had three different 'coordinators' who failed to transfer any information between each other. The day of the wedding, there was no one there to handle questions. Food and location were great, but quality of service by hotel staff because of turnover was very stressful and frustrating.

I had my wedding here on 5/7/2022. Let me start by saying the venue itself is beautiful. The rooms we used for our ceremony (top of the park) and reception (hall of Wisconsin) were spacious and pretty. However, i do have a few complaints that i believe brides should be wary about when deciding on this venue. The hotel and (most of the staff) were fabulous, but somebody definitely dropped the ball.

To start. My husband and i paid around $18,000 with our wedding package. This was for food drinks etc…which was completely fine, but with that we expected our service to be a little better.

We booked the venue last summer after visiting and falling in love with the “top of the park,” which is their room on the 8th floor with beautiful floor to ceiling windows and an absolutely stunning view of the capitol. The coordinator we started with quit a few months into our planning process and another one took over. We were then told that with the amount of guests we had that our reception couldn’t be in the top of the park room, rather the hall of Wisconsin. Which again, was fine. It was decided that the, “top of the park” would be used for our cocktail hour, as it has a built in bar and would be able to accommodate all of our guests, and we would use a completely separate space for the ceremony. This was because they had to, “flip the space,” and we were told that having the ceremony and cocktail hour in separate rooms would make it easier on everyone. ***DONT FORGET THIS PART ITS IMPORTANT*** During our tour we did NOT see this other space. Rather we were told this room was also bright and open and could accommodate our ceremony attendees (around 130 guests).
They also seem to be bit unorganized with their payment methods because on several occasions they were mistaken by the amount that we had already paid, or didn’t document correctly how much we owed. Which is irrelevant now, but still frustrating.

We met with our coordinator a month before the wedding to discuss the logistics of the day. Our meeting was via zoom and took about an hour. We discussed EVERYTHING in detail, from who to contact if we couldn’t be found, to how much free alcohol we wanted for our guests. Even small details like the color of our napkins, to if we needed a microphone during our ceremony. We talked with this same coordinator up until our wedding last week. I paid our final bill and expected everything to run smoothly. I was told a few days before our event that we would be working with their OTHER coordinator. someone we NEVER met. This coordinator had no idea about the details of the day. Mind you they were also having a wedding there on Friday the 6th. Which was beautiful but definitely impacted the organization and way my day was handled.


We arrived Friday to the hotel for our planned rehearsal in the ceremony space. We were also told that during our rehearsal we could set up, and decorate for the next day. Which was sorta nice, because i wasn’t allowed to get into the reception space (hall of Wisconsin) to decorate until noon the DAY OF MY WEDDING. Mind you my ceremony started at 2:00, talk about a stressed bride ): I WAS TOLD THIS A FEW WEEKS BEFORE & THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO. our first coordinator (that quit) stated we could get in that space at 5am to decorate so i, the bride, didn’t need to stress as we got ready for the ceremony to start. This would have been fine if things ran a bit smoother, but looking back it made me so stressed.

But okay, back to the rehearsal. When we arrived to the space we were SHOCKED. they had us in this little awkward room with big beams split down one half of the room (that would most definitely block the view of guests) , also, there was nowhere for my wedding party (22 total) to stand. AGAIN, they had all of our information and knew how many people we had coming and the amount of people in our wedding party. Long story short, we were able to get the space changed BACK to the top of the park. That’s where we met the coordinator for our event for the first time. She was obviously busy with the other wedding but we were assured everything would be set and ready to go. We were definitely upset they put us in that space to begin with! I do take responsibility for not requesting pictures, but still.. they knew well that space wouldn’t fit all of us!!! I feel like they just threw us in any available room.

Now..

Let me preface this by saying… i don’t know this girl (our coordinator for the day) . I’m sure she’s great with events she was a part of planning from the beginning but she was absolutely LOST IN THE SAUCE. It was little things all day long. I DID NOT expect her to be a wedding planner, just to do what was in our CONTRACT. My friend had to take over and do her job for her. Like i said, It was the very little things we planned for months ago with our original coordinator that was left out. For example, no microphone or podium for my officiant until after the ceremony started. No help or control of the lighting system for the reception. I saw her maybe 1 or 2 times the entire day. It was DEEPLY disheartening. She was very nice to my mom, but you could tell she didn’t know what was going on because she wasn’t even the one we planned this with… I’m not sure if i can even be mad at her? But, you only get married once (hopefully lol)
Now to the food and bartenders.
The food wasn’t bad at all. We had Top Sirloin and Chicken. We decided on the buffet option because we had 250 people coming. We wanted things to be easy and more causal for our guests and decided a buffet would be best. ALL of the sirloin was mixed together ( medium, rare, well done etc..) you would think for a buffet that was over $7000 it would be a bit more organized for the guests who like their meat a particular way. We had free drinks (beer and wine) until it was gone. There was supposed to be a sign that clearly stated this. But as you guys can see there has been a clear pattern here lol
THERE WERE NO SIGNS. We paid a lot of money for this and guests didn’t even know it was an option….
the HOTEL bartenders seemed SO upset and mad at the world during the ENTIRE reception. Why would you sign on to this event if you didn’t want to do it. We paid them $25 an hour on top of their tips. YOU WOULD THINK THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN NICER. i was never even told how much beer and wine guests had… or if they had any , but we were DEFINITELY charged an extra $341 this week for the EXTRA keg we had on reserve. Which makes me wonder if they are getting over on us??

Lastly, i was told that there would be a bright room for me and my bridesmaids to get ready in with mirrors and tables. This was another lie. When we arrived to this space it was an empty room under the lobby in the basement. The room didn’t have ONE window and fluorescent lighting (i swear I’m not a bridezilla yall). The lady from the front desk was the one who let us in the room, and i looked her DEAD IN HER FACE and said, “would you get your bridal makeup done in this dark room,” and she said “absolutely not”. She was great, and tired her best to find us another space but couldn’t. We ended up getting ready in one of my bridesmaids suites. Which was fine, but again VERY DISHEARTENING. I feel like the entire day people were coming up to me with questions asking where my coordinator was!!! And I had no freaking clue. Since then our card has been charged over $500 EXTRA for god knows what. We were never told , they just started charging us. not even a follow up call to ask if we were satisfied. Their gratuity was automatically included in everything… which is irritating looking back at the lack of service..

The valet guys were awesome, front desk people as well.

All I’m saying is brides be very wary when booking a wedding here. For us it was extremely unorganized and seemed like coordinators could care less about how my day went and just wanted our money.

Beautiful venue, inattentive customer service. Several stressors were added to our wedding day because of the lack of communication amongst staff members. Staff members do not communicate well with each other or with their clients. Several communication issues on their end resulted in loss of time and money on our end. I would not recommend this venue for any couple looking for a stress free wedding day.