Atrium Banquet & Conference Centre — Local services in Burlington

Writing this review as we drive home from our one-year anniversary dinner, where Alex, Tyler, and their team recreate your wedding meal from start to finish so that you and your spouse can re-live the experience all over again. What other venue does that for you?? The food: today was a reminder of how seriously Alex takes his food. Meet with him once and you can spend hours discussing potential menu options and pairings. The food tasting for you and all your parents was a nice touch, and offering seconds for all three entrees to your guests? Certainly memorable! This way, everyone can taste everything, and nobody leaves hungry. The food itself was perfectly cooked and presented. We highly recommend Alex’s risotto. You will notice that you get significantly larger portions than those convention centre weddings. I think our steaks were 10oz! Can’t say enough about the food. The drink: Tyler and staff do an excellent job finding the best wines for your day, creating custom speciality cocktails for bride and groom, and making sure your guests have a great time at the bar! Vanessa was exceptional at handling our crowd, and Alex even had a second bar set up for the cocktail hour to make sure nobody waited for a drink. The service: Tyler is the food/beverage manager and was also our “personal assistant” for the day. Can’t say enough good things about his professionalism and service. He kept us on track, kept our bridal party happy, and ensured that all service ran smoothly. What a gem! In fact, every server at the Atrium is just impeccably trained and as we got to know them, are really wonderful people. Our guests and us all felt at home. The venue: although you wouldn’t know it from the outside, Alex has renovated this location to one of the most beautiful venues we have ever been in! The dance floor and stunning chandelier makes for great dancing and wonderful pictures. The cocktail room is amazing to have for guests to visit the bar and mingle, while the dancing continues in the ballroom. We had 184 at our wedding, which I think is the perfect maximum to enjoy the space. Would not go more than that. The upstairs bridal suite with separate washrooms and bar is a treat on its own, and your bridal party with absolutely love being pampered in it! We got there early and they had appetizers and drinks waiting just for us! Alex also has hundreds of options of tablecloths, chair covers, and napkins, so you can get the exact colour and pattern you want to match your theme The extras: Alex included our hotel room, free shuttle for all our guests to/from the hotel, a wonderful bonus to our late night buffet, our one-year anniversary dinner, a tasting for us and our parents, upgraded bar, the fresh flower centrepieces, limos, Cocktail hour pianist. and the DJ. Probably more, but this was a year ago and I’ve lost track of all the things he did for us. Factor this in when you look at prices, because I think we still worked out to be about the same as a convention centre but with 5 star service, and he takes care of all of that for you!! The takeaway: this is a man who cares about his business. His food and service set him light years apart from any other venue I’ve been to, and he knows that. His venue and offerings are so well designed and thought out that we felt NO stress going into our big day. The fact that he scheduled meetings with us, our parents, and our emcee at regular intervals ahead of time was enough for us to know that he genuinely cares about our experience and doesn’t want a single thing to go wrong. The day was perfect, and we would never do it any other way. Going to weddings at convention centres now just reminds us of all of the ways Alex works hard to set the Atrium apart. Icing on the cake? We also had the bridal shower here in the cocktail room, which built the buzz for the wedding. Review for that is the same as the wedding - food, service, and venue is impeccable.

Feel free to ask Alex for my contact info if you want to discuss further, I’m happy to give the Atrium a referral if they...

We had our ceremony at this venue. I am providing my honest feedback about our experience. In the initial meetings, Alex (the owner) seemed respectful and gave us the impression he genuinely cared about our night and would do his best. On the day of event, everything changed - most promises turned into empty promises. Lesson learned: put everything in the contract, or you’ll be told later that it “wasn’t a contractual obligation.” The bartender (Rachard) was also serving as server and personal assistant - not what we were promised to. The other server, Patrick, was respectful and very helpful. Chair count error: As soon as the ceremony started, we noticed the number of chairs was incorrect and some guests were standing. We told the assistant, and the response was disrespectful - no ownership of their mistake. After 15–20 minutes of nothing, the bride and groom had to leave the party, call Alex, and explain. His first reaction: you (bride and groom) are wrong and the servers had used the correct count. He was very firm about his position! After a long discussion he still didn’t accept it, so we sent email proof. Finally they accepted their mistake - 30 to 40 minutes wasted. Not to mention that after Alex accepted their mistake, he started talking about extra payments (during our night while we had already lost 30-40 minutes), not knowing that we had made the full payment for the chairs. It was an unacceptable mistake. The part that disappoints me is that neither the bartender, nor Alex, were not accepting to what we were claiming. They were so firm about their own position, and it took us a lot of energy to prove them wrong. This is something you DO NOT want to happen at your ceremony. Tea/coffee was supposed to be served at tables after dinner according to our agreements. It wasn’t served to tables because they were short-staffed. In prior conversations, Alex assured us of one server per two tables. We had 8 tables, so we expected 4 servers. Only 3 staff were there and one was the bartender/personal assistant. Service fell short. When we raised this, Alex claimed he said “3–4 servers” in total, and never promised 4. Again: get it in the contract; don’t rely on polite and respectful talk. We prepaid $1,000 worth of drinks for the bar, and agreed we’d be notified before reaching the limit so we could top up (we didn’t want guests paying). Throughout the night, the bride, the groom and assistants approached bartender at different times to ask about drink situation, the bartender (Rachard) told them “don’t worry about it; it’s under control.” Two days later, we received a bill for ~$1,700 extra. We paid it in full, even though we were never notified or asked for permission to exceed the limit and the contract indicated they were to serve the $1,000 and not more without approval. The management’s approach afterward was disappointing - sending many emails about legal action, no acceptance of their mistakes, and Alex using firm voice in one of the meetings: “This was consumed and YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT.” They never took responsibility of their mistake, and chose to ask for payment many times. The owner, Alex, seemed respectful in the beginning, however, it turned out that they do not care about the customer satisfaction. Two major incidents in one event from the management side is not usual, and what makes it even worse is their attitude towards this. No one apologized for this mistake, and they only cared about the payment in this incident. We received incident reports after the event, however, these reports were containing many incorrect information about the night (such as serving pizza which never happened). The factual fallacies made the whole reports invalid. Receiving incident reports after a very important ceremony while already experienced two major mistakes was VERY disappointing.

Think twice before moving forward. Everything in this review is factual. We have proof for every claim (emails, invoices,...

Our wedding recently took place at The Atrium on October 10th, and The Atrium team demonstrated nothing short of exceeding excellence in all that they did for us! We booked our wedding nearly two years in advance here and from the very beginning Alex, the owner, was extremely accommodating. He worked with us on costs, provided some extra services to us, and was always present to answer any concern we had on short notice. He was quick to adapt to the current times, keeping us well appraised of the extensive measures he had in place to prevent any worries about COVID, and he unquestioningly implemented extra measures which we had wanted to ease our minds.

The day of the wedding was absolutely nothing short of perfect - and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it was absolutely the best day of our lives so far. The day leading up to the ceremony was well planned and quite regimented, all direction left to Alex and his staff. In his words, they, "told us when to breath, when to smile, when to stand and when to sit" which was a load off of our minds and served to enhance the feeling that this was our day, and we needn't have a worry.

After the beautiful ceremony, we were whisked off to do pictures while the ceremony room was flipped, turning into a second dining room for cocktail hour. Flipping the room this way was always planned, but instead of just utilizing it for cocktail hour, Alex had the genius idea to utilize the room for the entire evening as a social distancing tool, keeping each room with a respectable count of people. Finally, to facilitate this for the guests so they wouldn't feel isolated, he had a live feed of the head table and dance floor projected to this second room, so that the guests could experience the whole night with us even though they were in another room. If Alex had not done this, we would have had to either cut much of the guest list, or reschedule, so we're very thankful for his ingenuity and quick thinking.

The reception continued this theme of regimentation and practicality, as we sat at the head table, enjoying the evening with our wedding party. His team kept us and our MCs in the know, keeping us appraised of how meal preparation was going in the kitchen and aware of when speeches need to be done or when we had to do anything. Although all guests were required to wear masks any time they left their table, this was a welcome addition to the evening's procedures and added to everyone's peace of mind. The food was beyond a shadow of a doubt the best food we have ever had in our lives. Alex and his team prepared a lavish meal for us, consisting of four courses. The soup and pasta courses were exquisite and very well recieved, but the absolute show stealer was the main course. With a choice between 3 different meats, any and all needs were catered to. As a surprise, the staff came around with a second choice of meat as the guests finished their first. Most of us were absolutely stuffed at that point, but having that option for guests who wanted more was extremely generous.

Finally, the tail end of the evening was full of dancing and jolly celebration. Guests wore masks on the dance floor, but by this point in the evening, it was merely a formality. The pandemic was not on anybody's mind as they tore up the dance floor, albeit from a safe distance. The DJ did a fantastic job of working in a mixture of requests we had given and their own prepared music. All in all, every guest left with a huge smile on their face, our wedding a much needed evening out full of laughter, top of the line service, and positivity. If I had to give it a rating out of ten, I would say a scale of ten wouldn't be high enough. Alex and his team gave us 150/100! We and our guests cannot thank them enough for the day full of joy and indulgence that they provided us. If we could do it again, we'd do it a thousand times over.

Very sincerely, from the very bottom of our...