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The Sunken Ballroom, one of several wedding venues offered at Portland Art Museum through PAM Venues. Photo: MoscaStudio, courtesy of PAM Venues
Before I toured the Portland Art Museum’s event and wedding spaces in downtown Portland, Oregon, my wedding planner thoughts went something like this: “Oh an art museum! So fancy. There’s no way most people could afford to have a wedding here.”
I had, after all, seen the photos online. The Kridel Grand Ballroom. The Fields Sunken Ballroom. The word “ballroom” in general. Dollar signs danced in front of my eyes.
And while they didn’t exactly fade after my tour with Aly Gridley, the associate director of events at PAM Venues (formerly Artful Venues), I left with a much more comprehensive idea of what this (surprisingly underused) wedding venue offers Portland.
Here’s my take as a professional wedding planner.
The basics
Address: 1119 SW Park Ave., Portland, OR 97205
Fits: 120 to 560 people (a size that you’re going to be hard-pressed to find in Portland outside of a hotel or the Convention Center)
Costs: $8,500 to $10,500, Friday through Saturday. Other days are available with pricing upon request. This is for a 12-hour day-of rental, one hour for a rehearsal, and day-of access to some form of a green room on-site (one option pictured below).
Timings: All guests and decor must be out by 12 a.m., which means I recommend the reception end no later than 11 p.m. to allow for clean-up. That said, there may be flexibility on the clean-up depending on the vendor team, per PAM Venues.
Includes:
The Grand Ballroom at Portland Art Museum’s event space in downtown Portland. Note the stage on the left. Photo: Deyla Huss Photography, courtesy of PAM Venues
The cons
Sticker shock
The exclusive vendors list
Requires a minimum of a month-of wedding coordinator
Parking (though not as bad as I thought it would be)
Expect construction for the next two years
I’ve started the other venue reviews I’ve written by listing the pros but I’m swapping the order this time because I want to address the elephant in the room: That price tag.
$8,500 to $10,500 is not cheap. It’s especially not cheap when you consider that, on average, PAM Venues clients must hire some of the city’s highest tier (and thus, most expensive) caterers, will likely add an additional $1,000 to $2,000 in rentals for tablecloths, utensils, plates, mics, etc., and, per Aly, typically add an additional $1,500 in A/V through the venue itself.
But even after those (very substantial, not to be downplayed) expenses, if you booked PAM Venues, you’d still be on track for the national average for a wedding in the U.S.: $30,000.
And two of those three things I listed? They’re pretty much the standard in Portland. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a venue in the city that doesn’t require clients work with a certain tier of caterer and when planning for a wedding of more than 100 guests, $1,000 to $2,000 for rentals is kind of the going rate right now.
Which is all a very long way of saying that PAM Venues isn’t particularly expensive. Weddings are just particularly expensive.
Is this a cop out? I don’t mean it to be. I just anticipated PAM Venues to cost closer to $15,000 based on everything that comes with the space (more on that in the “Pros” section below). A $15K price tag would have aligned with what I’ve seen at other venues in Portland that have half the space, half the amenities, and not an ounce of the historical and cultural importance.
The Sunken Ballroom at Portland Art Museum’s event space, PAM Venues. This is the same room as in the first photo in this article, just with a different chair layout and drapes. Photo: Courtesy of PAM Venues
That isn’t to say that PAM Venues is cheap. Far from it. Particularly notable to me was the exclusive vendors list. This practice isn’t uncommon in the wedding industry and I would argue that PAM Venues actually has one of the better reasons for having a required vendor list (it’s a historical building and thus, vendors who directly interact with the building like a caterer does in the kitchen must abide by certain rules).
I also commend PAM Venues on the thoughtful approach that they take to the required vendor list. Aly said anyone whom PAM Venues contracts with is required to have a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy that aligns with the museum’s own robust equity and inclusion policy.
I’ve never heard of a venue requiring DEI work for vendors and it’s something I’d love to see more of, particularly in an industry where vendors often fight tooth and nail to get on venue referral lists. Requiring DEI work is also, in my opinion, a solid strategy to combat the major critique of required vendor lists: They’re racist.
Note that the required vendor list isn’t for every vendor at the wedding. As Aly put it, “We know that there are people you love whom you want to work with and we want to work with them too.” So there’s no required list for one- or two-team vendors like photographers, videographers, florists, and photographers. The only requirement — and it is a notable one — is that those vendors must carry business insurance.
I asked Aly about this because many vendors don’t carry business insurance as it’s expensive (mine through a company called Hiscox costs $850 a year, which makes it the fifth biggest expense in my business after taxes, labor, transportation, and my 5 percent booking donations program).
As of publishing, PAM Venues doesn’t ask for physical proof of insurance from the vendor team and, based on my conversations with Aly, they’d be open to discussing what this would look like for a vendor such as a photographer, videographer, DJ, or similar service provider who doesn’t necessarily have a team of people on-site on the wedding day.
Individual vendor insurance is, by the by, in addition to the insurance policy that the client must get. Again, that sounds scary but I can count on one hand the number of venues that don’t require event insurance. Here’s what wedding event insurance is and what it costs (usually $100 to $175 though it may be a touch more for PAM Venues as they require $2 million of liability coverage vs. the more standard $1 million).
Speaking of required vendors, PAM Venues does require clients to hire a minimum of a month-of coordinator. (Curious what the difference is between the different levels of coordinators and planners? Go here.) Why would I put this as a con when, technically, it’s great for me because it forces people to hire me?
It’s a con because it’s an expense that anybody booking at PAM Venues needs to account for. I’ll add that more and more venues are making a similar requirement so this is yet another boundary that isn’t unique to PAM Venues. They’re just better at saying it from the jump.
The Grand Ballroom at Portland Art Museum’s event space in downtown Portland. This is the same space as in the second photo in this article, just with drapes to hide the stage and make the room feel more intimate. Photo: PAM Venues
Lastly, I’ll get the other elephant out of the room: parking in downtown Portland. While never great, PAM Venues actually offers a solution: There are two nearby lots available to rent. Spots typically cost $14 for the day and the whole lot is available on certain days, per Aly. Street parking is also unmetered after 7 p.m.
Aly also shared that the only time she sees parking get real tight in the area is when the nearby Schnitzer Concert Hall has an event (solved by looking ahead at the events calendar before booking a date at PAM). Most clients, she added, don’t even bring cars to the wedding, instead opting to Uber, Lyft, or walk from the neighboring hotels. (Ask about PAM Venues’ work with AC Hotel by Marriott, which is an eight-minute walk from the venue.)
Speaking of parking, the museum has just begun a major construction project that is anticipated to last until summer/spring 2025. Does this mean all of your wedding photos are going to have bright yellow tape and cranes in the background? No. In fact, I would personally view this project as an opportunity to get access to one of Portland’s nicest venues before all the new stuff goes in and demand, presumably, goes up.
The pros
Hard to get more downtown Portland than this
Extremely all-inclusive
Full catering kitchen
Your money supports a literal museum
And that museum has a very robust DEI policy that they hold others to, too
Spaces are ADA compliant despite the venue being historic
More availability in the summer than other wedding venues
Coat check!
I usually try to balance the number of pros with the number of cons but tried as I might, it wasn’t possible with this review. There's a lot that’s included, which you might think is a given what with the price tag, but alas, I’ve worked at plenty of venues that cost a lot of money and don’t offer half of what’s detailed below.
Let’s start with the most obvious: This place has curb appeal. The building that houses PAM’s event spaces is called The Mark Building and it was originally a Masonic Temple.
Perhaps not surprisingly for an organization devoted to the conservation of beautiful objects, PAM Venues has kept many of those details in place including the original plaster molds of ancient ruins that line the walls of the Sunken Ballroom and a series of murals in the Grand Ballroom.
Thankfully, PAM Venues has also modernized, making both ballrooms compatible with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). They’re also working to replace all light bulbs to be LEDs and removing gender from the bathrooms. Such changes aren’t the default for venues, let alone historic ones, which is why I call them out.
The front entrance to the Mark Building, which is where Portland Art Museum has its main event spaces. Photo: Sweetlife Photography, courtesy of PAM Venues
I’d also be remiss not to mention the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, which you can add on as a rental to either ballroom at $1,700 per two hours per floor or $2,500 per two hours for all four floors.
Why would you do this? Because it gives guests a literal private museum to wander around in before the wedding and/or during any kind of post-ceremony cocktail hour or reception. I’ve seen a lot of ways couples try to solve for that particular “what do we do with our guests now?” time and treating them to a Monet and a van Gogh is a new one. Are you paying for it? You are and I can also see why for some folks, this would be money well-spent.
I’m skipping over the catering kitchen (again, a nice feature that makes sense given the cost) and I’m bypassing the getting-ready spaces (the Green Room is the best I’ve ever seen; it has a shower and lockable storage units). Aly said that no matter what, a rental at PAM Venues will include a dedicated getting-ready area but if there are no other events, folks who “only” rent the Sunken Ballroom can get access to the Green Room, the dedicated space for the Grand Ballroom and the room featured below in the three-photo gallery.
Four final things and then I’ll let you go:
Turns out that PAM Venues’ event season is opposite of most wedding venues. They’re often busy April through June (often with corporate events) but free up June through August before ramping up again September through December.
This place has coat check and yes, is that a silly thing that doesn’t seem worth mentioning? It is. And also, guests are often stumped by what to do with their coats and end up either tossing them on other people’s chairs or piling them in inconvenient piles so coat check is a v. nice perk.
Aly mentioned that there are group ticketing deals to the main art museum for folks who rent a space through PAM. She suggested it as a potential outing for guests in the days leading up or after the wedding. OK cool!
Can you take professional photos in the museum? No, not really because all of that art? It belongs to someone and that someone has a right to how the art is shared and/or monetized. However, as Aly pointed out, the Park Blocks, the buildings themselves, and all of the art in the Mark Building are A-OK to feature in professional photography.
The bottom line
The fact that I’ve been a wedding planner for seven years and only ever received one lead that listed Portland Art Museum as their venue is (extremely anecdotal) evidence of how underutilized this space is.
This place has options. And room. And literal art.
It’s one of the most expensive venues I’ve ever toured. It’s also one of the few venues I’ve worked at where I felt that fee aligned with the service.
It still won’t be the right fit for everyone because omg $10,000 but for those who want a historic, central, and, dare I say, iconic place to host a wedding (and particularly a large wedding), I recommend a stop by PAM Venues.
Learn more about PAM Venues: artfulvenues.pam.org and @PAMVenues
Check out the other wedding venues I’ve reviewed.
Do you know of a venue that I should visit? Tell me: elisabeth@elisabethkramer.com.