River Market Event Place

We decided to have our wedding reception at RMEP and it was one of the best decisions we made for our wedding. During the planning process, Rebekah and her staff went above and beyond by not only being helpful, but offering fun and creative suggestions that showed their knowledge of the industry and helped to bring our vision to life. They helped us to stay within our budget, while truly enhancing the environment at our reception with great linens and décor. The vendors we hired through RMEP were phenomenal– we truly didn’t have to think about anything during the reception, they had everything taken care of! We decided to hire day-​of wedding coordination and it was fantastic! Amanda ensured that everything ran smoothly and seemed to be right there anytime we needed her. She helped pass out glow sticks, made sure the food/​bar was running and worked to incorporate all of our desired elements into the reception. We could not be more pleased with our experience with RMEP and the staff. I would HIGHLY recommend this venue to any future brides/​grooms.

Love this place!
Beautiful inside and out and the owners are the best!
The also have a great airstream you can rent with a photo booth.
Rebekah (the owner) has great ideas to help you plan your perfect party or wedding.
They are very accommodating and I would recommend this place everyone!!!

I had the most beautiful wedding at River Market Event Place. I worked for many months to pull together vendors and personal touches for an amazing setting that I could not have been happier with. It was the best day of my life.
Unfortunately, my Saturday wedding fell on a weekend when River Market had booked both a Saturday and Sunday wedding. On the Sunday following my wedding, River Market — without my knowledge — left up my exact same wedding tent décor for another wedding to use, free of charge. They reused my lighting, draping, tent and chandeliers — all rented from several different companies. Seeing photos from another wedding using my carefully planned, multi vendor-​sourced décor was devastating to me.
Planning a unique wedding was something I spent months and months on — and one of the few things that distracted me from being diagnosed with cancer the year of my wedding. I wanted my wedding day to be perfect, which it was, but I also wanted it to be uniquely ours. In the days following my wedding I reached out to River Market trying to understand how this could have happened. River Market has not only refused to admit fault and apologize, but denied me reimbursement and instead rudely blamed me for inconveniencing the Sunday wedding that was «forced to incorporate my décor into their day.»
In our communications on this, River Market indicated there was no way my décor could have been taken down in time before the Sunday wedding and even if it could have been — it would have come at a hefty price. These excuses were only told to me after the space used my paid-​for design for another wedding. And unfortunately, Ultrapom, the company who did the bulk of the décor, posted a photo on Instagram indicating the lights took one person only one hour to take down. The post was not only comically insensitive, but clearly showed this could have quickly been done in between weddings.
I was shocked, saddened and truly disappointed by my communication with River Market while trying to fairly resolve this issue. I requested an explanation for how this could have happened, and later following many excuses, some compensation for having paid for a beautiful tent to be used at a stranger’s wedding.
After exchanging only two emails with the owner directly trying to resolve this issue, I was flat out told she would no longer respond to my calls or emails. In fact, my second/​last email received began «this will be my last message about this.» My phone calls and voicemails to try and talk it through went unanswered. After thousands of dollars spent at River Market, planning what the owner described as the most beautiful event in her space, I am appalled by the way I have been treated. I hope this review informs other couples what they may face once the checks are cashed and your event is done.
Thank you to River Market Event Place — your work was beautiful, but your business practices are unethical and shameful. River Market and its preferred vendors are clearly booking more weddings than they can handle — to the detriment of clients.
I would advise any couples trying to plan a unique wedding to be clear in communications here. Ask who else will be using the items you pay for. Otherwise, like me, you could end up lending your ideas, vision, and of course money, to whatever event follows yours. Good luck!

Fantastic space with an incredible, helpful staff. If anyone is trying to plan an event in KC, this space is certainly worth checking out. It’s really beautiful, and has a nice open feel to it. The outdoor patio area and the huge garage-​style glass doors create a nice ambiance.
It’s really a classy venue and very versatile; would be good for weddings, corporate dinners, dance parties, really anything.

We had our school auction here. Fabulous venue and Amanda was great to work with. Would recommend the space to everyone.

Had my fall wedding at the RMEP and the staff (especially Amanda) were wonderful to work with, and flexible in meeting the needs of our group. Their staff took great care of us during the reception, helping our parents load gifts into cars at the end of the night and even taking me through the buffet line to ensure no food spilled on my dress. Guests raved about the indoor/​outdoor space (when the garage doors are open) and urban feel of the location. They also offered a KC-​inspired bar package (complete with Boulevard beers, Amigoni wines, and even local spirits) that let us highlight Kansas City best beverages for out of town guests. Highly recommended!

Event date: August 31, 2012
From the day my husband proposed to me last March (once I quit crying), I knew I wanted our wedding reception at the River Market Event Place. I’d been to a few events there, everything from open houses to big fundraisers, and the space is so flexible it totally worked for all of them. I love that it doesn’t require much decoration — we nixed the flowers, kept the décor super simple, and the place looked modern and beautiful. They’ve got connections on caterers & vendors you can use, where they have an existing relationship & sometimes a discount, or you can use all your own folks without issue. Rebekah, the head honcho, was great to work with personally, and all my vendors said she was great to them too. She’s got support staff on duty as well who are energetic and willing to jump in wherever you’re needed (I had some random requests, including making her prove she could tie a pretty enough bow unsupervised: P).
We did a destination wedding, and just had the reception here; I kept going back & forth with whether I needed a coordinator in KC, but really never came upon a time where it was needed. They took care of the tables, chairs, and linen orders for me — we just picked colors and told her how many attendees we had, and she took it from there (I didn’t want to have to stress about all the details).
Overall, it was just a wonderful experience. All of our guests had a great time, and so did we!

We had our wedding reception at River Market Event Place on 6÷9÷12. My husband and I were pretty open minded about a lot of things during the wedding planning process, but the one thing we really really wanted was a unique venue in a cool downtown-​ish location. We wanted a place that felt modern and urban and spent many hours researching online and flew into town a couple times trying to find the perfect place. When we visited RMEP and walked up the driveway I instantly knew that this was the place! The venue is beautiful, super unique and the perfect size for groups under 150!
I mainly worked with Rebekah throughout the year of planning and she was great. She was good about answering questions and giving ideas, which we needed since we lived out of town. For a couple months we also worked with Caitlin, who we also thought was great, but no longer works at the company. My mom had some very specific ideas about decorating and sometimes stopped by the event space without making an appointment and Rebekah and others were so nice and always made her feel welcome and comfortable asking questions.
On our wedding day the event space far exceeded our already high expectations — it was absolutely stunning! It was everything we wanted and more and our guests were impressed and excited about being someplace different and interesting. It was a hot 95+ degree day, but the fans did a good job at keeping it pretty mild until the sun went down. Rebekah helped us with the layout (we wanted long tables) and there was plenty of room for dancing and sitting for 150 people (although it was a bit tight, one less table would have been perfect). At night we were able to open the garage doors and people loved going outside to cool off from dancing. We had a very nice security guard that the venue scheduled and the people on staff that night were awesome to work with.
This is the perfect spot if you want a hip, fun and unique location for your wedding reception. I would say that 140 – 150 was the max amount of people unless you are able to seat people outside. Also, if doing a summer wedding be cautious that it can get a little warm, but nothing that I didn’t expect from a venue with big windows/​garage doors making up a full wall (keep in mind that the sun sets on the opposite side of the building). All in all, we were SO happy to have our reception here, we loved it!

It’s unfortunate that I feel the only review possible for this venue is negative. When we first began working with them Rebekah was our contact. She was very personable to work with, and if she had been there these past months perhaps my review would have been different. However, she was not, and the replacement person Kaitlin, was far less gracious, and organized.
As we set up for our event, there were other couples coming through to view the facility, please excuse me if I am incorrect, but we paid to rent the facility during that time and no additional people should have been there checking it out. They had all morning to see it before we arrived for the wedding preparation.
Second, the weather was hot and humid, and the building was just beginning to cool down four hours before the event. And when I say cool down that means they set the thermostat to 77′ and turned on the fans. Definitely not «cool», in any way.
Third, our rental was until ten pm, with an hour of clean up after. Because of the temperature in the room, there wasn’t a lot of dancing going on, and some people decided to leave earlier.
Before eight we dismantled the decorations on a couple of the then unused tables to make life easier at the end of the night, as soon as that occurred Kaitlin and her helper started taking down the tables, pulling off the linens, until just the ugly table tops were showing, then they gathered up chairs as well.
Next, before 8 pm, two hours before the event was to be over kaitlyn walked over and turned the thermostats UP to 82 degrees. Finally I had enough, and asked her why she did that, initially her response was someone told her they were cold. I HIGHLY doubt that was true, but I am very certain no one paying the bills said any such thing. I told her she should have asked before she changed the temperature. That would have been respectful of the people paying the bills. She then told me that they do events there every weekend and they know what it would take to cool the room off. I don’t doubt that. But she wasn’t cooling off the room, she was removing the cooling until the inside temperature was higher than 82 degrees. Again TWO hours before our event was even scheduled to end.
At this point, I spoke to the DJ, who hadn’t seen anything like it at any event he’d done. When I turned back to the main floor area every chair that wasn’t occupied, had been removed, still just BARELY after 8 pm.
We finished cleaning up, and everyone was out of the venue a full hour before ten pm, when our paid time was up. At that time, there were two tables with no linens on them that we had set our purses on, and not a single chair left to sit down on, even if we’d wanted to stay until our DJ, whom we also paid to play until 10 pm was done playing.
Overall I believe if I could have given them a lower than one star rating I would have. The venue has possibilities, but it is highly unfortunate that the staff and/​or unwritten policies they are following aren’t conducive to a great experience for anyone. I can certainly say they aren’t the venue of choice for our next wedding later this year.
Honestly, the owners ought to refund a portion of the fees, and find themselves someone to represent them that is focused on serving the customer, not going home early!

I very recently had the displeasure of going to the River Market Event Space to tour the space as a possibility for my wedding. Now while the space itself is pretty nice and in good shape, the customer service was much less than desirable. From the get go it was bad and then just got worse. The person running the space, Rebekah, introduced herself to my fiancé and didn’t even acknowledge me at all. From there we were told «to go on in and look around» as she stayed outside talking. Upon entering, we did speak with an actual nice person named Kathryn, but it definitely didn’t seem like she had any idea why we were there. When Rebekah decided to join us she really didn’t have any information to offer about the space. When asked if they had any pictures to get a feel for how the space could be set up for a wedding/​reception, we were told she did not have any pictures on her «just go to facebook.», when we asked about pricing, we were just given a pamphlet with no secondary description or discussion. Throughout our self guided «tour» we were made to feel like we were wasting their time and we couldn’t «get out of their hair» soon enough. As we left, Rebekah barely said a word to us and didn’t look at us. At this point, we had looked at about 5 – 6 event spaces and were never ever remotely treated as bad or rudely as this location. I can’t imagine, nor would I want to, dealing with those people on planning my wedding. It was awful enough even trying to look at the space. I guess what baffles me more than anything is that it’s a nice space that causes a decent amount of money, but how do they get business when they treat potential clients/​customers so rudely. It would take nothing short if a miracle for me to use them for any event.

Beautiful space. When I was there there were quite a few people, but it did not feel crowded (thanks to the high ceilings and windows). The outdoor space was nice as well. This would be a great venue for any type of party or event. My only issue was that, although beautiful and spacious, there were only 2 single-​person bathrooms.

I must sing the praises of the River Market Event Place from a catering perspective. This newly opened unique space is amazing!!! With clean lines and the whole wall of windows, it is such a wonderful event space for holding a wedding reception, cocktail party or corporate dinner. I have encouraged all of my brides and many of my corporate clients to check out this wonderful facility. The catering kitchen is fully equipped with most everything you need, and although they have a very open concept, the kitchen can be closed off during preparation time with a really cool curtaining system. There are several rooms/​spaces up stairs on each side of the room, so there is a multitude of different ways you can use the space. Additionally, even though the facility has a «green» footprint, and is very contemporary, the addition of a soaring fireplace and a unique tree branch lighting system on the ceiling makes it warm and homey. Rebekah, who one of the owners, does a wonderful job explaining all the ways the space can be used and bends over backward to accommodate her client’s needs. This is going to be the «hot spot» event space, so book now.. .as soon as the word gets out, it will be hard to get a spot!
Deborah Williams, Shining Stars Catering, LLC

Attended an event for KCUR there and loved it. A great space.