Loft28West — Attraction in Aurora Township

I went to my son’s wedding on August 16th at Loft 28 West in Aurora. I arrived at 11:30 a.m. for pictures. Everyone there from the wedding party was sweating and wiping sweat from their faces. It was so humid and hot inside the event venue! During the ceremony, it started pouring down rain. The wedding went on, and was very beautiful until halfway through, when the power started flashing on and off. After a minute, it went completely out. The fire alarms started blasting loudly, but the ceremony continued. I can’t blame Loft 28 for the power outage. It was an act of God, but when it’s 11:30 a.m. when I arrived, the heat and humidity were so high in the whole event space that everyone was uncomfortable. The cooling system was either broken, or the cooling system wasn’t up for the task of keeping 200 guests formally dressed comfortable. For that, they are definitely to blame! After the ceremony, there was a mad dash for the narrow stairway to get downstairs because the alarms were blasting. Most everyone went into the cocktail area, but I had to go outside. The temperature was much nicer outdoors than gathering with a crowd of people in the hot, humid cocktail area. The washrooms didn’t have enough emergency lighting. A lot of the women were walking down the street to the casino to use the washroom. I went into the men’s room, and I couldn’t even see the urinals. Two hours later, they announced dinner was served. Still no power as of yet! I found all of the people trying to make their way down the narrow hallway to the stairs, and by the time I got up the stairs to the dinner area, the heat and humidity really got to me. A friend escorted me down the stairs and took me to my car. I sat in the air conditioning for half an hour before I could finally drive home. I couldn't go back into that sweat box! I missed the rest of the reception. I didn’t even have a drink or a meal that was paid for because the heat inside the whole wedding area was unbearable. If you’re planning a wedding at Loft 28 West in the summer, I highly recommend you check if they can guarantee to keep the temperature and humidity under control. Also, imagine all your guests herding up and down the narrow halls and staircase between locations. It’s not a...

Visually, this venue has everything I envisioned for our wedding - the charming loft. The food was great and bar service as well. However, brides, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you have your own wedding planner if you use this venue. The staff we met at the beginning of our planning journey was great (welcoming and friendly), but unfortunately there seemed to be a lot of employee changes and the charm began to fade.

Our dedicated point person took weeks to respond to emails and often the questions within the emails were not addressed. My personal coordinator had a list of final questions for our FINAL venue walk through and maybe 25% of our questions were answered, the rest being “I’ll have to ask.” Not to mention she seemed completely uninterested in our event.

We were charged an extra $500 for having a sign featuring our favorite cocktails, all of the alcohol we chose was within the bar package I choose, but because we made a sign, they gave us the run around and I had to have another in person meeting (post final walk through) to discuss further and withhold final payment until we were comfortable with all decisions and all decisions in writing.

Best part after all the issues they gave us - they spelled my husbands last name wrong with absolutely no apology and a feeble attempt at making it better (see attached image). The event coordinating staff at this establishment is terrible, disingenuous, inexperienced, slow to respond and quite frankly, unprofessional. Please do your research on this venue before choosing this for any event.

Bar staff, waitstaff and venue style, wonderful. It’s upsetting to see such a great venue being run so poorly. Again, make sure your have your own PRIVATE event coordinator when choosing this venue, or have a personality where you’re ready to negotiate and argue about literally everything, down to ice cubes.

The best thing this venue could do is change the entire event...

Our wedding day was absolutely perfect at Loft28W. Beautiful beautiful venue with multiple ways of setting it up. We had so much fun and were so grateful that everything was taken care of. We originally were going to do everything ourselves in our church's gymnasium, but due to unexpected circumstances we were cancelled on last minute. Joanne took great care of us and gave us an amazing price!! Our guests cannot stop telling us how much fun they had. And because we booked last minute, we were allowed to keep all the vendors, catering, etc that we booked beforehand which pretty much ALL other venues would not allow.

That being said, she did convince us to hire a bartender for the evening which we weren't originally planning on. One of the reasons that I agreed to it was because she said that all non-alcoholic drinks would be included for fee of the bartender, and alcoholic drinks would be bought by the guests. However, about a week before the wedding she informed us that soda is not included and that we had to pay an extra $550 on top of the fee for the bartender. So it ended up being a total of $800 for the bar. We were not at all happy about this because we either had to dish out this extra cost or leave our guests with only water to drink, which felt tacky.

They also spelled my husband's last name wrong on the welcome sign, so that was a bit disappointing. Especially seeing from another review that it wasn't the first time it happened, lol.

Other than that, we were grateful that everything went smoothly and my vision was carried out well. She made time for us to visit the venue a couple days before and helped find decor solutions for small details we wanted to incorporate. Overall, the price was amazing and worth that extra fee at the end, but the communication was...