The Van Dusen Mansion — Attraction in Minneapolis

My main bit of advice for folks hoping to host a wedding or other event here are: 1. Be sure to review the sample contract on their website BEFORE submitting a deposit to save your date and 2. make sure you book well in advance of your ideal date so you won't feel pressure to reserve a date before you feel sure that you want to book here.

The backstory on this is:

My partner and I almost reserved Van Dusen for our wedding but decided that we were not comfortable with the contract, which requires clients to accept responsibility for 100% of the cost of the venue immediately upon signing. This means that, barring reimbursement from wedding insurance, if you have to cancel your wedding for any reason, or decide you don't like the required catering company, etc. you will likely be required to pay the entire venue fee even if you book and then cancel more than a year in advance.

It took several days to hear back from the contracts team after we raised concerns and said that we did not want to sign. We didn't realize that we could read the contract before submitting our deposit, so when we received it, we were very surprised and the terms. At first we were told that we would lose our 5k deposit regardless of whether we decided to move forward, and it took a few days to get a meeting with the contracts team. Once we did, we did feel that we were heard. The contracts department was willing to try to work with us to try to find a solution since we were not made aware of the contract terms in advance of submitting deposit payment info. When we said that we felt that the contract was predatory, they apologized for the poor communication on their end. We were ultimately not able to reach an agreement with the leadership team on the contract terms, but after some discussions and consideration on their end, we were at least not held responsible for paying the deposit. We agreed to pay a $500 admin fee for the time spent discussing our contract addendum requests, and our date was held while the discussions were ongoing.

Overall I think we would have had a really nice wedding here; we just were not comfortable with the level of financial risk associated with booking and planning long-distance (we live in MA and did not have a chance to visit in person prior to reserving a date). Everyone we spoke to directly was kind and understanding about our concerns, but we really had to ask for a meeting several times before getting a straightforward response. I get the feeling that their staff have a lot on their plate with all of the venues the company manages, We were not able to speak directly with "leadership" so, be aware that when you sign on with a venue from A'BULAE/Bellagala, it is a bigger company with a less personal approach. We decided to book with a family-owned venue in St. Paul instead and feel that it's a much better fit for us, though perhaps not as...

Monica and Morgan are friendly at first then it is hard to get an answer out of them or any help. Sicily was a day of person and absolutely our favorite. She did an amazing job with the information she was given. Also, whoever you designate as the day of person is going to have their hands full and will probably get very stressed out because the people we had tons of meetings with did not communicate to the day of team. The DJ Daniel will smoke pot during your ceremony and throughout the night for you and all your guests to smell, will talk crap about your song choices to everyone, offers the bridesmaids edibles right before the ceremony, gets extremely high and can’t do his job, will start drinking during your reception and tell the groom that this day is a special day for him and doesn’t care that this day is not about him as he is working and not a guest at the wedding, will say happy 420 to the kids on the dance floor when it wasn’t even 420. He kept coming up to the bride every 20 ish minutes asking if he could play (x) song. The florist did a god job on the arch but showed up 4 hours prior to the ceremony and told the bride she “changed her bouquet so it matched the theme better”. No prior warning and was highly unacceptable. Also had to pay an extra 500 for the wrong flowers. Florist said we had (x) amount of flowers in our package and the venue said different. The officiant Leslie was terrible she is a Karen, shows up 15 minutes before the ceremony and changes how everything is going to operate. Ex changing who the groomsmen walked down the isle with. Will tell your guests they cannot have their phones out even though the bride and groom wanted pictures from all guests, will make up stories about the bride and groom to tell during the ceremony that are completely inaccurate and inappropriate. For example, telling the guest the bride had a suspended license at one point which never happen. Her boss was at the wedding and when she got offered a promotion at corporate they had heard about it. We had asked for a 5 minute ceremony with our vows in private. It turned into a 30 minute ceremony with us reading vows that she wrote. The photographers Rachel and her assistant where amazing. I couldn’t recommend them enough! Overall it is a pretty venue but not a good team. Also, just an fyi, if you pick the custom package with a Saturday you will be spending 50k and not get...

VDM was excellent and Monica was such a great contact for the year-plus we were planning along with the day-of. This venue stunned our ~115 guests (and our dog) from beginning to end.

Luckily, the weather cooperated for our 10/21 wedding so we had the ceremony in the courtyard, allowing for a slow but procession through the grounds as the night progressed.

Anything over our guest count would’ve been tight for the ceremony space AND dining hall, so keep that in mind. We chose to add two hours in the morning for $200/hour, very much worth it and the perfect amount of time for a 10-person wedding party (plus parents) to get ready and take pictures before a 4PM ceremony. Otherwise your standard event time is 12PM-12AM.

I’m still in shock from how gorgeous every space looked. The carriage house was recently renovated and new flooring was cute and thankfully not slippery with spilled drinks towards the end of the night.

Of note: clarify everything you can think of with your venue contact ahead of time. There are no stupid questions. We saved a lot of trouble by asking a lot of questions and Monica was so responsive and helpful, even if the answer was no.

Also: they might recommend a Bellagala DJ but our DJ (DJ Hampsterdance) had no trouble with their sound system. There is a ~$500 fee for outside DJ because they also staff an in-house AV technician to guide in case your DJ is unfamiliar with the venue or needing help.

Additionally: They exclusively partner with Mintahoe for catering. If you want a different catering vendor or are dead-set on bringing your own booze to “get ready with” and hate the idea of paying corkage for that (or paying per-person fees for outside cake and/or late-night snack), this might not be the venue for you. We had a fine experience...