Ayva Center

I sometimes bring my father to the senior activity center in the same shopping strip as Ayva, so when my husband was looking for a central place in Houston to hold a yoga event next month, I mentioned this place to him. He went to visit the venue and after he talked with Willie, one of the booking managers, Willie agreed to give him a $ 1000 discount rate for nonprofits, then over the phone agreed to give an additional $ 500 discount. Yesterday I went with him and another organizing member of the yoga event to look at the venue and discuss details to start the contract. The space inside looks great, much classier than what the nondescript outside and empty shopping strip it’s on would make you think.
But after looking around we sat down with the owner since Willie wasn’t in yet, and she said she would not honor what Willie had quoted not to mention anything lesser. She then started giving excuses why the yoga event won’t work at her venue anyways because a company recently booked to have an event on the same date. Even though it’ll be before our event so our timings won’t overlap, she was «considerate» in telling us that it might get too noisy for us since the company might still be packing up their stuff when our time starts (though she firmly told us we need to be out of the venue by our scheduled time, so shouldn’t the same go for the company?). We could tell she was just implying we should go some place else since she now has that day covered and that she was trying to be as politely unwelcoming as possible. Then Willie walks in and when my husband asked him about the discounted quote he gave, he flat out denied ever saying such a thing. We were too stunned and just left. So just a word to the wise, if you ever REALLY have to work with this venue be careful and make sure you get what they quote you in writing.

It’s really too bad that the Ayva Center couldn’t live up to its full potential. For a wedding that was attended by roughly 400 guests (most of which were restaurateurs & other prominent business owners), the center could have had a lot of return clients for business meetings and social events. Instead, most everyone will remember NOT to use this facility due to the un-​imaginably slow & unprofessional service they provided that night.
The major complaint of this facility is the catering service. For about 40 tables, it appeared that there were only roughly 4 – 5 servers circulating about attempting to provide a three course, sit-​down dinner. At that pace, my table did not get served the main course until roughly 9:30pm! To give you a basis of the pace, cocktail hour started at 6pm with the doors to the main hall opening around 7pm. For two hours, we were only served bread, soup, & salad. Thankfully, the bride & groom’s entertainment and events were on-​schedule & meticulously organized thus filling up the space in between courses. It provided a great atmosphere and somewhat slight distraction to our rumbling stomachs.
Another big complaint by almost all tables was that the servers did not finish serving an entire table before starting to give out food at another. This, of course, resulted in a lot of waving around trying to get food for the overlooked table mates. I was seated with a few Unilocalers & a few older couples and though we tried to make light of the scenario, we couldn’t help but feel bad for the older people seated with us as they were terribly hungry and was up almost past their bedtime!
When the bride & groom were coming around to each table, they kept having to apologize for the food situation. The groom was so pissed– off but all of us kept attempting to appease him and re-​assure him that it was something he could not have foreseen and could not control. I felt bad for the couple & wished they didn’t have to deal with this on their wedding day because everything else (the church ceremony, the entertainment, the speeches, etc) were great!
Perhaps the lesson of the story is this: if you do use this facility, do NOT use their food/​catering service!!! Although their website states they provide full service for weddings/​events, go ahead and bring your own outside caterers. Use this ONLY for the large space that they can provide.

So I came here recently for a wedding reception. Yeah…
First off, the wedding itself was wonderful. However, the reception that was thrown here was awful. This was not anything the groom or bride could control and I felt bad for them because it was a messing up their special day.
But this review needs to be written so no one else is faced with the same problems on their wedding day.
DO NOT USE THIS VENUE FOR YOUR WEDDING.
The food was super delayed and the service was terrible. It was like 8 people trying to serve 30 tables.
The decorations, DJ, lighting was all amazing, but that was not due to the venue but the groom and bride’s doing.

I’m assuming this place just opened because I don’t think anyone in town knows this place exists, besides the people like myself that happened to be listening to the radio that night.
Drinks– paid $ 9 for a watered-​down Long Island IcedT
Music– pretty good, think a 97.9The Box DJ was spinning
Club itself– very big and spacious, alot of seating, too bad it was empty
Crowd– hhhmmm how do I put this, HOOD! Def not the Downtown crowd. There were «poles» that many girls felt the need to slide and dance on, I thought I was in the strip club when they started poppin on a handstand and getting $$ thrown at them
Will I be going again– probably never!