Saint Elias Banquet Centre - Wedding Venue Ottawa

If you’re considering booking your wedding here, read this:Got married here in Oct 2022. While the reception was beautiful, the food was great, and the service during dinner/drinks was awesome- There were some things that made my head turn the wrong way and therefore I would recommend you reconsider or give it some thought before booking your wedding here.Firstly, the communication from Zare from St Elias was terrible after we gave our deposit. After we gave the deposit, we contacted him 3 times months later with questions we had pertaining to our big day and he would not respond. We would send follow up emails 10 days later and 1/3 times he got back to us. We would even have to call and leave a message with no call back. Once we even went in to St Elias to have a chat and get our questions answered but he wasn’t there. Some of the questions needed to be answered in order to be communicated with other vendors too, so this was a problem. It all ended up working out when we met with him a week before the wedding (since he had last minute planning questions for us) but boy did it ever create added stress and I had to stay on top of sending a/several follow up emails every time to try and get my questions answered. While I understand it’s my responsibility to follow up, it’s a lot to deal with chasing people several times in addition to planning the rest of your wedding. Questionable customer service.Secondly, we had paid our flower vendor extra to do same day coordination on our wedding day (setting up centrepieces, putting up seating chart, placing party favours on each plate etc). We had purchased about 50 extra party favours and additional candles and candle holders just in case. As a part of the agreement with our flower vendor, I gave her all of the party favours and centrepiece items (candles and candle holders) to set up. Since there were extra party favours, candles and candle holders, after she finished setting up the reception room, the flower vendor decided to leave them in a box under the gift table but failed to mention this to us. We contacted St Elias a week after our wedding, via email, to ask if we could come grab our leftover belongings as that’s when we realized. We sent 2 follow up emails, and on top, I even texted Zare himself since I had his cell phone number asking what happened to these belongings that had our name and date of our wedding on the party favours and never heard back at all. While the flower vendor should have communicated where she was leaving the extras, I cannot believe our venue would not even respond at all. It is extremely unprofessional.If you are planning your wedding here and you don’t have a wedding planner, I wouldn’t recommend booking here.

We had our traditional wedding at this gorgeous venue. The service was exceptional. Very friendly staff. Thank you so much!! I would highly recommend to have your events here.

If you’re looking for a venue, look no more. St Elias has everything. Customer service is more than amazing. Food is phenomenal, they were very organised and Brian took all the wedding stress off of us. We ended up having a dream wedding. Highly recommended.

Was there for a reunion get together. Wonderful facility. Meal was delicious. Staff excellent

My family and I went to the Lebanese festival this year and it was a blast. Music, dancing, rides for the little one, food, food and more food. It was a great time, and will be the source of great memories for years to come. We will be going back next year when it comes back to town. Also, big shout-out to all the volunteers that make it possible.

Really nice banquet centre for small or large groups. This place can handle any type of event. Well laid out building, many free parking spots, friendly staff, and the catered meals are good.I was recently here for Mark Sutcliffe's kickoff for his campaign. Running for mayor in the upcoming October 24, 2022 election. It was a fabulous event. Definitely voting for him. I think that he will be a great mayor to run our city.

Very beautiful set up for a wedding. Nothing to speculate about the building but lots of free parking. Descent bathrooms. And the food was good. (Better then most big wedding events.) Seem fairly sound proofed. Wheelchair accessible.

Expect absolutely ZERO communication, organization, and basic human decency. They booked another wedding for our day and promised we wouldn't feel their presence. They allowed the other wedding to bring a band to bang on the drums VERY LOUDLY outside their venue and it could be heard very clearly in my wedding venue. It doesn't stop there, they also promised me when I booked close to A YEAR in advance that I would get a bridal suite. On the day of my wedding, the other bride came in and claimed that she was also promised the bridal suite. Eventually, they kicked me out of the bridal suite and had me sit in an unorganized, poorly lit, and a frankly filthy storage closet. When I tried to get in contact with Zare, the manager of this centre, he ignored me and has still a month later not responded to me.Zare is EXTREMELY hard to get a hold of. My husband had to call him up to 10 times everyday for a whole week, mind you this was the week before my wedding, for him to grace us with a phone call. Complete lack of professionalism and not suited for a job such as this one where communication is absolutely key. He would only tell us KEY information that we need for other vendors after we called him RELENTLESSLY. He inconvenienced all our other vendors.Finally, the staff were extremely rude to our guests. All I'll tell you is when my husband's family tried to take leftovers of the cake my mother in law had prepared for us, they rudely told them to leave some for the church. They also said the same thing when they tried to take the flowers that we paid for.Piece of advice, it is one of the cheaper venues in Ottawa but this is one day in a lifetime. Do not allow them to make every aspect of your wedding an exponentially more stressful day to save what turns out to be a negligible amount of money.Note to the owners: being cheap is not enough to keep customers happy, you need to be able to provide at the very least DECENT customer service.

Wow what a great wedding we performed Dj at great service and food.

Private party for 120. Well organized, great 4 course dinner. Friendly, efficient staff. Thank you!