Wedding Ceremony Recon: DePaul Student Center, Rooftop

Over lunch yesterday, Liz and I checked out a potential spot for our wedding ceremony. It was literally right across the street from where I work: the DePaul Student Center, located at State and Jackson.

While we’ve scouted out a few places previously for the ceremony, most of them so far have been pretty expensive. Even something like a permit for a group event at a public park costs more money that we realized.

One of the things Liz found out was that there were DePaul spaces that could be rented out for private use. And since she’s affiliated with DePaul (undergraduate alum, current graduate student and current employee), she would be getting a slight discount on the rental rates.

The spot we were checking out today was the rooftop of the Student Center. We met up with Joe, the director of the center, who was incredibly laid back and kindly walked us around the entire floor – inside and out.

A row of tables, stacked in a thin walkway towards the eastern exit.

My back to the walkway, this is looking out to the main deck area.

Another view of the space. I’m facing West, towards State – and to my right is Jackson.

This view is facing the building where I work. I found out today that the building itself is called “The Litton Building,” or something like that.

Looking back onto the main entrance to the roof.

While many parts of the floor itself are technically a public space, available for students, the fact that our wedding will be on a Saturday helps a lot. It’ll be during the first weekend of the first week of classes, and so the likelihood of there being a ton of folks here on a Saturday is going to be low.

So far, we’re liking this option for a few reasons. First off, it’s cheaper than many of the other places we’ve seen so far. It’s downtown and lots of public transportaion is nearby. The ceremony can be outdoors, but there are some backup room options available.

We feel pretty good about the gamble on outside weather. Tricia and Darryl both worked for the Air Force as weather analyists, and Darryl helped us by crunching a ton of old weather data. He looked at about 100 years’ worth of info, and gave us some windows of time that traditionally don’t have a lot of rain – hence our settling on the September 12th date.

When we asked Jim specifically about the wind – he mentioned there would always be some bit of wind, but said it always varied. For the most part, there have been regular group gatherings in this space – our wedding would be the first he’d ever heard of, taking place on the roof.

While we were outside, there was a slight and very pleasant breeze. At times it was calm, at other times you’d feel a wave of wind pass by. No huge gusts, no sudden bursts. It seemed fine, but I’m unsure whether it’ll be the same come September.

Here’s something that I’ll just float out there, in the hopes that someone comes across this blog entry in the next couple of months. Anyone ever attended a rooftop event/function in downtown Chicago in September? If so, was it windy at all, that you can remember? I’d be fine with a bit of wind and all that… and expect it, since we’d be on a rooftop. I just definitely don’t want there to be some kind of awful Mary Poppins-esque wind going on, with all the guests having to keep one hand on their dresses and hats the whole time.

Related:
Wedding Planning: Reception Recon
Wedding Reception Recon: Lincoln Park Zoo
Wedding Reception Recon: Stan Mansion
Wedding Reception Recon: Lincoln Park and the Notebaert Museum
Wedding Reception Recon – Maxim’s: The Nancy Goldberg International Center