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COMMUNITY CENTERS & INDOOR PARK SPACES are perfect for your Wedding Reception & Event venue.
There are a lot of ridiculous very low cost banquet halls that are called community centers, which have an open floor type of set up. Where are community centers provide tables and chairs and the rest is up to us, iDesign Eents / Bay Area wedding planner that will work with your budget to make your venue amazing.

And many of the community centers in the Bay Area, Northern California, East Bay, Dublin, San Ramon, Oakland and Berkeley are gorgeous and well open to just your regular rentals but look amazing dressed up. Especially if you use iDesign Events Studio and Bay Area Wedding Planner.

These gorgeous BayAreaWedding Community Center tend to be

a) good for your budget (well, at least relatively speaking compared to the large hotels!) and

b) booked well in advance because of their low cost.

Bay Area Wedding Planner Veronika Khar and her team knows exactly what to do so you can get your dream wedding on a dime. Contact us and let iDesign Events Studio and Bay Area Wedding Planner do the rest.

*Brazilian Room, Tilden Park (Berkeley hills): Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous—its reputation is well-deserved. The Brazilian Room was originally built as the Brazilian Pavilion for the 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island. When the exposition ended, the country of Brazil presented it to the East Bay Regional Park District as a gift of friendship. However, because it’s so amazing, it also falls into the booked-way-in-advance category. So, a no go for us. (Notably, EBRPD opens its spaces to residents of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties before opening them to the general public, so if you’re looking for a venue for 2011 and you’re a resident, you can reserve the Brazilian Room beginning this week. Reservations open to the general public after the new year.)
Cost: $2,150 resident/$2,580 non-resident for seven hours; $3,800 resident/$4,560 non-resident for twelve hours

Jack London Aquatic Center (Oakland Estuary): Lovely waterfront views, though the banquet room itself is rather utilitarian (because, after all, this is an aquatic center!)
Cost: $1,800

Joaquin Miller Community Center (Oakland hills): This is a huge community center up in Joaquin Miller Park; it wasn’t really my style, but does provide plenty of space and a nice connected deck with a view. Additional rooms can be added to expand the capacity well beyond 100.
Cost: $1,530 resident/$1,874 non-resident

Lake Merritt Sailboat House (Lake Merritt): Not to be confused with the Lake Merritt Boat House, which now houses Lake Chalet, the Sailboat House is a 1960s-era facility used most of the time for boat rentals of various types. The upstairs features a large banquet-style room with a deck that overlooks the lake, though. It’s beautiful, but the space itself has a very 1960s-vibe, and on the day I visited it, was also very damp and sailboat-smelling. (In fairness, it was right after the massive rains, though.) I think you could spin that into a great nautical theme of some sort, though, and the view at night has got to be incredible.
Cost: $750 resident/$870 non-resident

*Lake Temescal Beach House, Temescal Regional Park (Upper Rockridge):For some reason, this lower-key EBRPD facility is off of people’s radar, even though it’s lovely in its own right. That’s nice, though, because it means it’s easy to book! The beach house overlooks Lake Temescal and has a terrace behind it, and there are pathways leading up to a small waterfall and down to the lake itself. Like the Brazilian Room, though, the Beach House has caterer restrictions and a few other idiosyncrasies.
Cost: $1,500 resident/$1,800 non-resident

Lakeside Garden Center (Lake Merritt): The Garden Center, another Lakeside Park gem, has a mix of rooms that have a pretty typical community center feel. Like most of Oakland’s community centers, this is another 1960s-esque building—but it has a beautiful Japanese garden behind it, and the Garden Room has a wall of windows and doors that open up into the garden itself, allowing events to flow between indoor and outdoor areas seamlessly. The major caveat: Oakland garden clubs get preference for this venue and don’t schedule super far in advance, so you theoretically can’t book this space until six months before your event. (In practice, they do sometimes bend the rules and book this space earlier than that depending on who picks up the phone, which we learned the hard way! So it’s wise to submit your paperwork well before the six-month mark, despite what OPR may tell you.) For larger events or banquets there are multiple rooms that can be combined.
Cost: $1,170 resident/$1,350 non-resident for Garden Room with Japanese Garden

Leona Lodge (Montclair): In the end I didn’t look at this one in person inside, but I did find out that it’s newly-renovated, and they’ve stripped the wood back to natural so it’s apparently much lighter inside than Sequoia is. Leona also has an outdoor BBQ pit, which could be a nice plus. (We wandered around the outside on a walk one day and didn’t love the disconnect between the indoor and outdoor spaces, though.) It also holds a slightly larger crowd than Sequoia.
Cost: $750 resident/$870 non-resident

Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown): Another spot we’ve used for work….ah well! Huge and good for large banquets, though.
Cost: $1,650 plus $550 for kitchen access

Piedmont Community Hall (Piedmont proper): Wonderful—and crazy expensive unless you’re a Piedmont resident. Has a sweet little tea house that can be rented for an additional fee. (Maybe I can take all our misaddressed mail—we share a zip code with Piedmont and frequently get junk mail listing Piedmont as the city—and pretend?!?) Actually it’s pretty expensive even if you do live there, and it books up light years in advance.
Cost: $2,400 resident/$3,500 non-resident

Piedmont Veterans Hall (Piedmont proper): As Piedmont venues go, this one is a bit more reasonably priced, but it just didn’t strike me in the same way the Community Hall did. (I imagine that’s the case for others, too, which explains the big discrepancy in price!)
Cost: $1,545 resident/$1,900 non-resident

Sequoia Lodge (Montclair): I love this little lodge, tucked up in Montclair. It’s a very rustic space under the redwoods, complete with a stone fireplace and conversation circle inside. It fell off the list only because it was so dark and we’re getting married in June, so it didn’t seem like a good fit. Outdoor space was also really important to D., and the extensive deck at Sequoia is all covered by a wood overhang, making it dark and not especially outdoorsy. I’d do a winter wedding (or a winter anything!) here in a heartbeat, though. All City-owned Oakland venues provide tables and chairs and rent linens, which was a big plus.
Cost: $750 resident/$870 non-resident

Studio One Art Center (Temescal): This is another newly-renovated facility (Oakland tax dollars at work!), but the only outdoor space is the courtyard out front, which is very, very public. Not quite what we wanted. Studio One also requires more extensive permits for special events (probably because it is located in a residential neighborhood), although they do at least seem to have a fairly streamlined process for getting these. This seems like a great spot for fundraisers, though—they even have a theater.
Cost: $1,260 resident/$1,700 non-resident

*UC Botanical Garden (Berkeley hills): Beautiful, but a little close to work for D.’s taste. A wide range of spaces for rent, though; on Saturday you must book the center in its entirety, but on other days of the week you can opt to book smaller rooms and gardens, so it would be perfect for a wedding of 30 or so.
Cost: $2,200 plus $250 for Redwood Grove and Amphitheatre; $250 buyout to use outside caterer

Assorted other Oakland community centers: Most of the recreation centers in the city can be reserved for a fee. Since I’ve never been to most of them, it seemed silly to write anything much about them….but some popular picks include Dimond Recreation Center, Redwood Heights Recreation Center, and the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, among others.
Cost: Varies by number of guests ($75 to $250)

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