President Lincoln's Cottage

The Lincoln's Cottage was the perfect venue for our May 11 wedding. My husband was looking for a wedding in the country and I was looking for a country in the city, and the Cottage provided the perfect compromise. It was easy for our out of town guests to take the shuttle wee provided from the Viceroy Hotel and for our loved ones in town to Uber or park on site, and it felt like the Cottage was our own magical corner of the city that we met in and lived in. Everyone who works for the Cottage was lovely to work with, our guests were thrilled to explore the house during cocktail hour, and it was perfect to host the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception all on the property. Despite the rain post-ceremony, the whole evening was magical (our gay wedding even had a rainbow!) and all of our vendors easily worked with the team at President Lincoln's Cottage. While they were bummed to end the party at 11 p.m., it was a quick and easy walk to the after party at Slash Run across the street and the celebrations continued. Would get married at the Cottage again in a heartbeat!

President Lincoln's Cottage was the first wedding day venue we looked at and we immediately fell in love and signed the contract! It's a really cool venue that even many DC insiders know little about. It's absolutely picturesque and the monument is accommodating of various wedding traditions - we were able to have a full Baraat procession with a horse and light a fire in the havan kund during the ceremony. They also allowed us to have live Indian food stations during the cocktail hour. Our only issue was largely the result of staff turnover right before our wedding - the Cottage coordinator we had been working with for a year left and the new coordinator had to learn all the logistics of our large Indian wedding all at once. This led to some confusion with delivery of items. The Cottage stores items like alcohol from outside vendors in a storage area in the basement of the visitors center. However, when multiple weddings occur over the weekend these items are stored in the same room. There was some confusion by the various coordinators about which beverage order was ours and unfortunately we ended up having the wrong wine & liquor served at the wedding. The Cottage is an incredible landmark and more people should know about it, but do make sure that all the coordinators you work with have an itemized list of whatever you store at the Cottage in advance of the wedding so they can cross-check to make sure the right items are put out for your event.

Choose President Lincoln's Cottage for your wedding!! It has a beautiful green space in the middle of the city. It's easy for locals to get here. Plenty of parking for those who drive, but also easy to get buses in here too. The event coordinator at PLC (Kyesse) was easy to communicate with and everything falls into place nicely. We did cocktail hour on the South Lawn and inside the Cottage, the ceremony on the North Lawn at sunset, dinner upstairs, and the reception downstairs in the cottage. On nice days they open up the windows and doors of the cottage, so it really feels like an indoor/outdoor experience. We were able to comfortably fit ~100 people upstairs for dinner. Though I think you could probably get 115-120 people up there. The cottage is broken up with separate rooms, so it feels intimate and there are different spaces in the cottage for people to hang out if they are not dancers. If you go with this venue, I would also recommend: - RSVP for catering - Dan Goldman Events for DJ (ask for Ricardo), bistro lights, and dance floor

This really was our dream venue. It’s beautiful and you feel like you’re transported outside of the city without having to leave the district. I love the mixture of outside and inside the venue offers. Actually being in DC was convenient for us and our guests. With this venue location our guests were able to explore all of the great tourist options in DC when there weren’t wedding events. There aren’t any hotels next door but DuPont Circle, where we had our hotel blocks, is only a 15 minute drive. The flexibility for wedding size was a huge plus for us. Most of the other historic venues in the DC area have a limit at around 150 but even then a few of them seemed like it would be really tight if our guest count went over 100. We both have large families who live across the country so we knew we’d be inviting a ton of people who may not be able to travel so being able to fit up to 200 people while still working if significantly fewer people RSVPed was important and it worked perfectly. Jerry, the event coordinator there, is great. He’s very responsive and made sure everything ran smoothly. The only negative is that the cost of the tent from the preferred vendor they make you use (Sugarplum Tenting) is about the same cost of the venue itself so definitely take that into account when thinking through your budget. Sugarplum is the exclusive provider for basically all of the historic venues in DC though so if you have your heart set on getting married in a venue like that you’ll be dealing with them no matter what. Despite the cost, Sugarplum does a great job. The other thing to note is that the venue doesn’t provide you with any chairs, decorations, linens, etc. I was fine with that because it meant that we had more control over the look but it does mean more work and extra costs to consider. While the venue has recommended vendors they don’t require you to use any of them, besides Sugarplum, which I really appreciated because I liked having that level of control. For those of you who are worried about weather, please don’t let it dissuade you from choosing Lincoln’s Cottage! It POURED the day of our wedding but the rain plan worked perfectly and everything was still beautiful. The cottage is so beautiful that we still got great pictures and we used the covered porch to get outside shots that turned out beautiful with the stormy weather. Instead of having the ceremony on the front lawn it was moved to the tent space. For the procession we walked from the visitor’s center to the tent with Jerry holding clear umbrellas so we wouldn’t get wet. We had a chuppah from our florist and they were able to set it up underneath the tent too. We then had cocktail hour in the cottage while the caterer flipped the tent space for the reception. We had about 120 guests for our wedding and the cottage didn’t feel crowded for cocktail hour and guests were still able to drink and get some fresh air on the porch.