Your Boutique Hotel: Alton, Illinois Wedding Venue Review
Your Boutique Hotel is a fantastically unique wedding venue in downtown Alton, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. It’s an alternative to its sister space, the larger WOW Furnishings and Events center, which makes Your Boutique Hotel the perfect solution for small to mid-sized weddings. If you’re looking for an all-in-one venue in downtown Alton, Your Boutique Hotel may just suit your needs!
A Photographer’s Review of Your Boutique Hotel in Alton, Illinois
Your Boutique Hotel (formerly WOW on Broadway) is a fantastically unique wedding venue in downtown Alton, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. It’s an alternative to its sister space, the larger WOW Furnishings and Events center, which makes Your Boutique Hotel the perfect solution for small to mid-sized weddings. If you’re looking for an all-in-one venue in downtown Alton, Your Boutique Hotel may just suit your needs!
The features that the hotel offers come into play even before you begin to get ready for your day, as the venue is also host to a number of boutique hotel-style rooms that can comfortably sleep well over 16 guests. This means that travel the morning of your wedding doesn’t have to be a hassle. You and your family can spend the night at the place where your ceremony and reception are going to be hosted! When hair and makeup does arrive, however, Your Boutique Hotel offers a beautifully-lit and spacious Bridal Getting-Ready suite, replete with large mirrors, ample window light, a separate restroom, and it’s own bedroom. It’s separated enough that, should the groom (or anyone you don’t want peeking in) stroll by, you don’t have to worry about blowing your cover!
When it comes time to take portraits, your photographer should have no shortage of ideas and spots in which to take those photos. Not only are the dark wooden tones inside inspiring, but you have numerous areas outside in the surrounding streets, alleys, and storefronts of Alton, Illinois. I’ll add some examples below, but you can see even more in Haley and Nathan’s blog post!
As far as your ceremony and reception go, the venue is full of lots of opportunities to make it your own but, even before you add your own touch, it starts as simply a gorgeous space! Wood shiplap accents the exposed brick, with hanging greenery at the end of the room opposite of large, sprawling windows. Since the main room is longer than it is wide, I recommend placing gift tables and the food line in one or two of the side rooms so you can maximize your mobility around the room when it’s time to eat, give speeches, or DANCE!
At the end of the day, if you’re looking for a beautiful, competitively priced, and turnkey solution to host your wedding day events in downtown Alton, I highly recommend giving Your Boutique Hotel a shout and sparking up a conversation! Keep scrolling for some images of the actual venue.
Your Boutique Hotel’s Bridal suite
Your Boutique Hotel’s huge spiral staircase and warmly lit library
Your Boutique Hotel’s pool table
Your Boutique Hotel’s Bridal Suite
Descending the staircase!
Your Boutique Hotel’s ceremony space
After the ceremony, we crossed the street for some group photos. You can see Your Boutique Hotel from the road!
Below are just a few examples of the potential for great photos at the venue and the surrounding area! We had a blast in the short time we had for the wedding couple portraits! See more here.
This is inside Your Boutique Hotel, at the top of their spiral staircase. So stunning, so much potential!
From a similar angle as the ceremony, here’s the same room set up for the intimate reception.
The reception space from the other side, facing Your Boutique Hotel’s large windows.
Lit properly, even light and soft skin tones are easy to achieve in WOW’s main room!
If you’re currently looking for an awesome space to host your wedding or reception in Alton, Illinois, I hope this little review was helpful or at least assisted you in figuring out what you want in a wedding venue.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated or partnered with Your Boutique Hotel.
Josie + Cole - Alton, Illinois Engagement Session
I’m elated that I get to photograph such an amazing couple like Josie and Cole! They’re a blast to photograph, and take my weird and wonky instructions like TOTAL champs. We spent the evening taking their engagement photos in Alton, IL: both in downtown Alton and at Gordon Moore Park.
I’m elated that I get to photograph such an amazing couple like Josie and Cole! They’re a blast to photograph, and take my weird and wonky instructions like TOTAL champs. We spent the evening taking their engagement photos in Alton, IL: both in downtown Alton and at Gordon Moore Park. I took way more photos than I usually do at engagement sessions, but I had to! These two looked so good!
I’m loving the amount of blogging I’m doing lately. Though I often struggle to hit Google’s SEO word count recommendations (and may not even hit it here), I find so much value in showing shorter visual stories for each couple as opposed to the one or two photos they may get featured in my portfolio section. I feel like this is such a more accurate depiction of the couple and how they interact with each other.
For photographers: I used my Nikon 45mm f/2.8 tilt-shift lens pretty frequently in this shoot. It still was only on maybe 10% of the overall session, but that’s significant for a specialty lens like this one. It’s super sharp when you nail the plane of focus, and the color renditioning is top-notch. It’s definitely one of the pricer lenses in my bag, so I kinda need it to be as sharp as it is. The rest of the session was done with my 58mm 1.4G and my 24mm 1.4G lenses. These are what I shoot 98% of all my photos on. They get me in the action, they’re sharp, they’re reliable, and they render perfectly. Take a look, if you dare.
Getting engaged? Already engaged? Not engaged yet but thinking about it? I’m your photo guy!