Adele Grage Cultural Center — Attraction in Atlantic Beach

Adele Grage is a beautiful for a wedding/reception! I do have some advice for future couples looking at using this venue to help save them the stress we had to feel leading up to the wedding due to booking issues (the reason why I docked stars):

1. When you go in to book the place, make sure that you see that your time is getting booked on the calendar. This was our biggest headache with the entire wedding and time leading up to it as there were issues 4 times with us not being on the right calendar or it being in the right place (I think it's because they had a lot of turnover between the time we booked (14 months out) and the big day... unfortunately new staff and management had to pick up the pieces/try to fix which I'm sure was stressful for them too). Note: Not being on the calendar or in the right monthly folder (there's a system of folders for each month, because our April wedding was put in the December folder) means the venue gets double booked for the time you paid for.
2. If you are unable to see that you were put on the calendar/right place in that first consultation, we recommend calling every 1-3 months to be sure it's what you agreed to and that no one else is getting booked over you (when you pay, it books the ENTIRE building - a lot of our frustration was that other groups were getting double booked for the same times, they just wanted 1 side but when you pay for the entire building it feels wrong and my husband was supposed to get ready on that side! He didn't need to be getting dressed for his big day with strangers).
3. On that note, if you don't select a full day (for example, we realized we also needed to book 3 hours the night before to setup and went in to book/pay for that also) that the hours you specify are on the memo of your check/their calendar too/all the places. We booked 7-10pm and paid for the night before in Dec, but 3 days before the wedding in April we were told we could have 8-10pm because another group was in there. I'm not pushy, but at that point I had to ask "but we paid for 3 hours". We ended up getting 8-11pm. This worked, but also wasn't ideal because we had a noon wedding. This stressed out my parent because they needed their sleep. I had to manage my own frustration about it and an upset parent which was a lot.
4. Make sure you ask which tables can be used when you book/pay. Get the number of tables and write them down. The group that was double booked in the building before us (for the night before - yes - both the night before and wedding day were double booked) told us we could drag back over the tables to the side we used for the reception when they left... then a park ranger came in morning of and needed those tables for a different venue (somehow they didn't all belong to Adele Grage). We had to resetup half of the room again while our hair/makeup artists were there under a schedule. My family about lost it on the park ranger (even tho he was the messenger), because of all the issues I'd had so far there. ... *Overall, I want to say great location, super pretty (you'll get great pics!), kid friendly, nice that it has chairs/tables/kitchen... but I wanted to provide the above advice to others who plan to setup and have a wedding/reception here... things I wish I had known how to handle differently. I still probably would've picked the location, but I wish I'd known how to handle it (us both being introverts and non-confrontational) so that we wouldn't have had the...

This lovely gift for the Atlantic Beach community is a little jewel. It allows for all sorts of community gathering and provides a much-needed meeting space as well as a place for the arts.

The city of Atlantic Beach does a fantastic job to maintain and program a variety of live music events, theater, readings, and art shows. On a recent visit, I caught a performance of a rather funny Sherlock Holmes play that was put on entirely by kids under the excellent tutelage and inspiration of a local Irish theater maven named Aine Healy-Richardson who operates the First Act Children's Theatre and clearly enjoys helping kids to learn, express themselves, and take risks...

We just used the Center for a family event and it was outstanding. Tim and Veronica were very helpful and showed us the lay out and how to use everything. Mayor Glasser and City Manager Corbin helped out and made sure it was an event to remember. We even had security, Just in Case , from COAB Police Department, it was like she wasn't even there, very seamless. All in all it was a great place to hold an evening party and everyone had a great time. Thanks...