This last Saturday, I had the pleasure of working a wedding at a super-chic, intimate venue in downtown Sacramento.

Don’t let its size fool you.  Studio 817 is an incredible little event space for just about any type of event you might care to have.

From the outisde, it looks fairly plain, but once you enter into the space, you see it’s clearly divided into two discrete, usable spaces.

Right when you walk in, you enter into the main lobby area, which serves as the cocktail lounge for weddings, and which could serve any purpose, really, for any other type of event.  There is ample seating around the outer walls, some tall cocktail tables, and a bar area all ready to go.  For our event, they utilized their recommended vendor for bar-tending services – Randy Peters Catering, who always does a fantastic job all around.

Here in the lounge, I placed a single wireless speaker, to provide music and announcements for this room during cocktail hour.

After the ceremony, the guests were invited into the cocktail lounge for beverages while the staff turned over the main banquet room, staging the tables where the ceremony took place immediately before.  This took no time at all, and looked great!

Once you turn right through a sliding barn door into the main banquet room, you initially see the ceremony area with chairs, an aisle, and an arbor.  Perfect for small-to-medium ceremonies.  The ceremony area in this setup is set off from the rest of the room, where the tables are sitting to be moved, by elegant white pipe and drape.

Once the ceremony was over, and the guests invited to the cocktail lounge, quick work was made of turning over the room.  Down came the pipe and drape, and over came the tables for dining.

This opened up the dancefloor area, where I was set up along the back wall.

You will want to be sure that your DJ is familiar with the acoustics of the room, because the concrete and stucco walls, coupled with the high ceiling make for a real echo-chamber effect that could be problematic if your DJ doesn’t monitor their volume levels or have a firm grasp of proper microphone techniques and usage.  This becomes crucial for the ceremony as well.

Though you can’t really see it from the picture to the right, the dancefloor area is really large, and has plenty of room.  It is offset from the dining side of the room nicely, so that guests who want to hang out and relax can do so while others are dancing the night away!

A nice feature of this room are the two panel doors that slide up on the front wall, allowing the banquet room to open up into a nice, intimate closed patio just off the front of the building.  This was wonderful once the sun went down and things started to cool down.

In all, Studio 817 is a fantastic little gem, nestled into Downtown Sacramento.  The catering and sales manager Morgan is awesome to work with, and is attentive, and fun.

With plenty of versatility, and a nice public parking lot right off the back of the building, you really can’t go wrong with Studio 817.

Cute little Donut table, located in the main banquet room.