Enoch Turner Schoolhouse

The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse was the perfect venue for our mid-day wedding! It was absolutely gorgeous and the windows allowed for the natural light to pour in. The coordinators were also so incredible and understanding, on the day of they were also so helpful and on top of everything.

GREAT experience with this venue. Ben & Roxann are a great team - very communicative and clear on what will/won’t fly for the space. We had ~75 people for a ceremony and sit-down dinner wedding and had an incredible time. It is an excellent downtown location close to everything you would need. We have lots of teachers in our family so this was an immediate yes from both of us for the history aspect alone!

This venue is a stunning canvas to create the event of your dreams - very DIY friendly. However, it should be made clear this is a historic place first, then an event space as a secondary function. Definitely not for you if you are looking for a full-service venue. They are incredibly good at recommendations for whatever you’re looking for - planners, caterers, music, you name it, they’ve got somebody. They have do preferred vendors for catering and some other services but the options are excellent and can accommodate various budgets. Even better that string lights in different configurations can be set up by the venue for a small fee. A number of tables and chairs are included with the venue; the chairs were recently (mid-2022) upgraded to chiavari style chairs in a dark wood.

We had a last minute loss of another venue and the Team at Enoch Turner were quick to respond, fair with pricing and super helpful! The space is truly STUNNING and was a feature in our day all on its own. When showing my photos everyone comments on how beautiful it is. All the guests also all commented how welcoming it was. Our Day Of Planner/My Sister was so grateful for the ease of set-up and easy collaboration!

We absolutely loved our wedding at Enoch Turner this July. Stacy and her team were great to work with and executed our plans perfectly. ETS is a very popular venue, but it isn’t a cookie-cutter place with a menu of packages. Beyond choosing from their preferred list of caterers, it’s up to you to design and create the event that you want. That being said, we were extremely pleased with our wedding and can offer some pro tips:

-Catering: When choosing a caterer, look no further than En Ville. Sommer met with us right away, asked us about our story, and designed a menu that incorporated our favourite foods and significant meals in our relationship. We cannot stress enough how smoothly catering went from creating the menu, tasting, and coordinating day-of. We also cannot stress enough how delicious the food was and how impressed our guests and we were with the expert professionalism of Sommer and her team.

-Décor: Let the natural space and features of Enoch Turner do most of the decorating for you. We had a small guest list (75) and were able to have our ceremony in the original schoolhouse room. We didn’t add a single decoration to that room and it suited us (2 teachers) perfectly. We added minimal decorations to the foyer (seating chart, family wedding photos, guestbook). In the reception hall, we had long tables with simple greenery and candles to complement the green posts. We put the bridal party’s flowers in vases in the windows behind our sweetheart table. Go for all of the stringed lights- the room has beautiful natural lighting and they create a warm glow for the evening and dance party. Don’t stress about over-decorating the space- it’s already gorgeous!

-Bar: When planning the party part of the reception, we were a bit concerned about our guests leaving the dance floor to visit the bar in the foyer. We had En Ville set up a satellite bar next to the dance floor to solve that problem and everyone danced the night away.

-You need an alcohol permit (SOP) to serve liquor. It’s easy to get online. However, if you want your guests to be able to drink outside, you’ll need an indoor-outdoor permit, and you have to apply for that 30 days in advance. You’ll also need to supply a drawing of the space, which ETS can forward to you. Just don’t leave the permit too late ☺

We will admit that we found the venue aspects of our wedding planning daunting, but we hope these tips are helpful!

The moment we stepped into the Enoch Turner schoolhouse in September of 2017, we knew it was the perfect venue for our wedding. The space is gorgeous and requires very little to “dress it up” for a wedding.

The high ceilings, green beams and archways, and cathedral like windows in the grand hall gave a dramatic, ethereal feel to the ceremony – at night, the candles we had placed in the window sills and the strings of lights across the beams added a lovely ambience to the evening. (Note: We went through the venue to have the lights installed as they were less expensive than our catering/rental company for this task.)

Everyone we spoke to leading up to the wedding was very responsive and helpful – especially Stacey and Ben who assisted us with all of our last-minute questions as well as keeping us looped in on when we could have access to the venue to complete some small set up ahead of the big day.

A couple notes on logistics:
- They are VERY strict on the SOP/Liquor License here because they are a Ontario Heritage Property; there was some confusion on how to/if we could serve some champagne that was gifted to us by my parents. Even though I flagged it several times ahead of the wedding, there was still a need for my dad to clear things with the venue and caterer before the wedding, small bump, it all worked out.
- We had a total of 78 guests + staff and there was plenty of room in the great hall for the ceremony and dinner, we did have a live band though and had to remove a couple tables (one of them being the band’s table) before we started the live music portion of the evening so there would be room for a dance floor.
- The bar area was a bit too small for all of our guests to hang out in while they changed over the room for the reception, it was a bit of a rainy day so not everyone was keen on going outside - we had people spill into the classroom after we had finished the legal needs in there after the ceremony
- The caterers required a space in the corner on the north side of the hall, while the corner on the south side is ALWAYS used as storage – so keep that in mind when planning for the amount of space you may have.
- Acoustics were great for live music – I heard some people say they had a wonky experience with sound in this venue, but we felt things sounded great – we did rent a proper PA though and have a sound guy FYI
- If you’re looking for a “dance party” at the end of the night, I suggest you rent some coloured/flashing lights to create that mood.

A beautiful space for our wedding. It was everything we could hope for and loved the fact that we could have the ceremony in the school room and move directly into the cocktail hour and then to the reception in the west hall. It was beautiful for photos and Carole was pretty great to deal with and was always answering her emails in really good time.

We LOVED this venue for our wedding - and everything was perfect. The two staff members we dealt with were incredible, responsive, flexible and kind, and the space didn't need much to look beautiful. The venue offered some tinkle lights for a small fee and then we had flowers everywhere, and that was it. The space is quite pricey because you need to rent everything and there is a landmark fee, but for us it was worth it and was lower than many of the other downtown venues we looked at (and we looked at many). Also because it is a heritage building there are some limits to what you can do with the space (you can't hang anything and candles need to be in tall votives), but that didn't interfere with any of our plans. From the moment we walked into the space we knew it was perfect - and we got many compliments on the versatility and the cuteness! Truly - I wouldn't have changed a thing.

I have a special place in my heart for the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse: it was my favourite field trip location when I was in elementary school. I remember visiting at least twice between the ages of 6 and 11, and I loved everything about this site, from the Victorian-era classroom to the beautiful event hall I glimpsed in the back . . .

Fast forward twenty years, when I discovered that Enoch Turner hosts weddings! It felt meant to be! The cost was reasonable, our wedding day was available, and as someone who is especially enamoured by the history of the city where I was born and raised, I was happy to know I would be supporting the Ontario Heritage Trust. Our decision was made without hesitation.

Dealing with this venue was stress-free. They were gracious, accommodating, and kind all the way through. I was especially thankful for the meeting I had with the event co-ordinator about a month before our wedding.

What really made this venue special was that we had an on-site co-ordinator for the Big Day. Soraya kept everyone calm when my bridesmaids and I were late arriving for the ceremony. She soothed my anxieties and ensured everything ran smoothly.

It was a fantastic day in an incredibly unique and beautiful venue that had special meaning to me, and I'm so glad this was the place where we chose to get married.