The Great Venue Search: Museum of Contemporary Art

I had known for quite some time that San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) held weddings at their La Jolla facility. I had also heard that their rental fees were quite pricey (I can't confirm it, but someone once told me that for the full museum in La Jolla, the fee is at least $6,000). A cool place, for sure, but that whole La Jolla beachside vibe never quite seemed to pair well with a contemporary art museum. However, a couple of years ago, they opened a gallery space downtown. So, I gave them a ring to check out the rooms available for rental in the downtown facility.

There are two space that would be available on the date we were looking at: the Figi Family Concourse (an outdoor space) for $3,500, and the Berglund Room & Terrace for $2,000. We're only looking for a space to accomodate about 80 guests, so the Figi concourse, while lovely, would have been to big.

The Berglund Room & Terrace was just about the right size. The downside? The $2,000 rental fee pretty much just gets you the room (they can also provide chairs, an event manager at the reception, etc), but it's pretty much a blank space.

While that means that there's a lot of potential things that you could do visually, that also meant that we would need to get lots of rentals (tables, linens, lights) on top of the catering and bar...you can see how this could quickly become very expensive. So if your budget is a little less prohibitive, I say check it out. Bonus points that their staff was super helpful.