Emerald Lake Lodge

What a perfect experience. Emerald Lake has it all - absolutely stunning environment and charming buildings, delicious food, and thoughtful, professional, and skilled staff who are experts at their craft. Kerrie and Natalie were absolutely wonderful to work with, very responsive with questions and flexible with ways of planning around shifting restrictions. We had a beautiful, stress-free wedding experience, and all of our guests were blown away by the location, food, and service. We truly can’t thank you all enough!

With Covid our original wedding date was 11/20/20, we of course had to push back to 11/19/21. Kerrie was amazing and so helpful from day one. She was extremely supportive and helped the day run so smoothly.

We had our ceremony in Cilantro on the Lake and it was perfect. We had the whole venue to ourselves and it was perfect for our small event. One great thing about this venue is there isn't much need for decoration.

Our family is still raving about the food! It is to die for!

If you are looking for the perfect location for a winter wedding, Emerald Lake Lodge is perfect! The location is amazing, you have the lake and the mountains right there and so many places to explore for outdoor and adventurous photos. One suggestion that our photographer gave us was get ice cleats for shoes, especially the boys. It was a lifesaver for tromping through the snow for the perfect picture.

We could not have asked for a more perfect location and venue for our wedding.

We got married at ELL February 28, 2020. We booked our venue through a third party (our wedding planner) so we did not have to directly communicate with the lodge beforehand. The day of the wedding we had both our wedding planner on site as well as access to one of ELL's event coordinators for the entire day. They were so wonderful about accommodating our outdoor ceremony location as ELL had a ton of snow at the "Viewpoint" where our ceremony was supposed to take place. Instead our ceremony was held down on the patio of Cilantro and it was absolutely magical.
Our guests raved about the food served during our reception, the salmon in particular was such a hit that people were going back for seconds and thirds.
One of our main concerns with having our reception upstairs in the Vice Presidents room was that it wasn't going to be big enough. We essentially had access to the whole upper floor and there was plenty of room for all our guests to dance and socialize.
The day after our wedding the staff continued to check in with us to see how our day was and if there was anything else that we needed during our stay.

Nikki was there to make sure the day was perfect which we are so grateful for. We went for an elopement package and the flowers and cake provided were amazing!
ELL is quite rustic but we enjoyed the laid back atmosphere and the beautiful scenery!

This place is absolutely amazing to get married at. Every view is breathtaking and it’s a magical place to get married in. The staff and super nice and extremely helpful.

After visiting Banff the first time, Emerald Lake was one of our favorite spots. It was more remote than other places in Banff. After getting engaged, we decided to get married in Banff and Emerald Lake was our first thought for where to get married. We had a lot of communication issues the first half during wedding planning, it was difficult to get questions answered, but it improved with time. We had a lot of issues with checking into the lodge. We asked to be put on priority check-in so we could check in as early as possible, but as the bride and groom, we were only able to check in maybe 30 minutes earlier than regular check in, so we were definitely just told we were put on some priority list, but it never happened. A lot of other family members expressed the same frustrations to me about checking in. The food for the wedding was AMAZING. We had so many people compliment our food, and we never even did a tasting, just picked foods that we liked and hoped for the best. Our biggest complaint was the screen and projector we rented for the day. I had several conversations with staff about it even just a couple of days before the wedding, and it somehow slipped through the cracks. It never showed up, so I asked the head server/staff and he said he was never told anything about a slideshow happening. He got it over as soon as possible, but then we had no assistance in setting it up. However, they did waive the rental fee for it in the end. But, the hassle of getting it together was pretty bad. The Best Man spent over an hour trying to get it all to work properly. The head server/staff was also not aware of a cake cutting. So I got up and asked him to slice the cake and lay it out for self-service on the dessert table. He did that right away. The servers did a great job. They were very friendly and responsive. We had a cocktail hour in the yoho lounge. It was a beautiful space and everything was perfect. The venue itself was beautiful. We had a lot of people talk about the bartender. Saying he was not the quickest at making drinks, but that he was very chatty, funny, and interesting. One of the biggest and maybe only complaints we heard from family/guests were that the tourists were out of hand!! During our rehearsal they were coming onto the patio and getting right in our faces taking photos of us. There should really be no tourists allowed past the end of the bridge where paying guests get to be. It definitely ruins the feel having dozens of tourists follow us (brie and groom) AND family/guests around taking photos and videos of us. What an invasion of privacy! The staff were great and very responsive when we asked for something. I asked if someone could please start a fire on the cilantro patio for guests to enjoy a bonfire after the reception, and they got on it right away. My family/guests were very impressed with the shuttle system. In particular, the shuttle picking you up right at your cabin, so you wouldn't have to lug our luggage up all of the steps to the main lodge and then be shuttled down. Very convenient. The breakfast buffet was delicious. Overall the wedding went very well, with a few hiccups here and there, but the scenery makes up for some of the hiccups.

Tessa (the event coordinator) is fantastic. Cilantro (the patio venue) is an amazing backdrop with fantastic food. We visit Emerald Lake every winter, and to get married there this summer was amazing. Nothing beats the colour of the water and the surrounding mountains. Don’t forget to get wedding photos in one of the canoes!

I would highly recommend the elopement package at Emerald Lake Lodge. Not only is the location breathtaking, but the service we received from the staff was outstanding! We were treated so well and everyone was very accomodating. Our whole day ran so smoothly, I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Two breakfast buffets are included in Elopement package & where amazing. It was just the two of us at our Banquet & our wedding dinner was romantic with Champagne and a very delicious meal & dessert. We sat overlooking the lake & mountains.

An enchanting, perfectly romantic place to elope. It was so beautiful with new fallen snow, blue green emarald coloured lake set in the mountains, with smoke coming from cabins. It was absolutely magical. Loved the Elopement package