A Historic Luxury Wedding Venue with a Grand Ballroom

Classic. Timeless. Elegant. Grand. Combine a gorgeous space with incredible food and a creative outlook and you'll understand what's possible here! 440 Elm offers a historic landmark from architect Elmer Grey that channels the richness and grandeur of a monumental building showcased in the leading architectural journals of 1913. Newly reimagined with a grand ballroom, this former church's Sanctuary offers a luxurious setting with soaring 30' ceilings for dinner and dancing at your wedding reception. A large outdoor Plaza, an industrial Parlor, a black-and-white foyer, and a chef's garden offer a number of photogenic event spaces for you to enjoy memorable moments with your family and friends. In-house catering supplied by Bite Catering Couture and a broader team of high end wedding professionals ensures a thoughtfully designed, beautifully presented wedding reception that tells your story and reflects your tastes.

Large Spaces for Weddings up to 400 guests

Enjoy the rare non-hotel space with a gorgeous ballroom that can host a wedding reception of up to 400 with room for a dance floor. Add your ceremony and/or cocktail hour on our grounds using our expansive Plaza, Courtyard, and Garden and additional indoor event spaces. There's plenty of room for larger events while enjoying the privacy of a standalone event space with no other groups or guests on property.

Our Approach to Weddings

We want you to be more excited about your wedding after it happens than going in. You'll have stories, emotional experiences, memories of spending time with important people in your life, and photos you will always cherish and eventually show your kids.

Our venue is an extension of our approach to catering - focused on a custom tailored approach, gorgeous presentation, and the warmth of great hospitality. We know how important it is for you to greet your family and friends with great hospitality - a drink and some food on arrival and a warm, gracious service throughout your event. Unlike many other venues we welcome custom menus, pushing the boundaries on creative expression, and creating highly visual expressions of the personalities and cultures of our couples. We of course do this in a historic venue with many priceless historic elements in the footprint of the event - which does result in some precautions to ensure the venue stays beautiful and historic for events to come.

The flip side of this is that we don't offer:

• all-inclusive lists where you can get the pre-existing laundry list of everything that is included
• set packages where you can get a meaningful quote without a conversation
• food trucks or cash bars that create lines and interfere with timelines while pulling people out of the event flow
• hands-off spaces where inexperienced wedding vendors can hang, attach, drag, or bump into things without causing meaningful damage

We provide recommendations, tools, templates, and policies that make it more likely for your event to be well designed with a professional vendor team that has a collective reputation of making great things happen smoothly on your big day. Some tools that may help include:

• We require the use of Timeline Genius to create a shared, cloud-based timeline shared across all vendors
• We require the use of a professional wedding coordinator at a minimum to ensure that you have a pro overseeing pre- and day-of schedules and requirements
• We provide Merri as floorplan software to visualize all the elements that need to be laid out for your event
• We can provide a list of recommended vendors (or a parallel approval process) to help you plan out your full event

A Flexible Space with Many Options

440 Elm is a newly renovated historical space designed to enable a number of different experiences that you can incorporate into your wedding vision. We have a rare combination of private indoor and outdoor spaces for larger groups in an urban setting

• Our outdoor Plaza area is permitted for wedding-related activities and allows for a long walk down the aisle (or a baraat), a fire ceremony where the flames can be seen by the guests, and beautiful mandaps or chuppahs. We can also incorporate dining under the stars.
• Our gorgeous Sanctuary space is a throwback to 1910's elegance and glamour. We offer one of the largest non-hotel ballrooms in Southern California.
• Our Parlor space and foyers allow for additional spaces for cultural ceremonies, a more relaxed lounge setting with a jazz band, or a post-wedding DJ setup for dancing into the night
• Our garden space and the surrounding neighborhood provides many picturesque spots for photos
• Smaller rooms including a tasting room, ready rooms, a production room, etc provide areas that can be used for setup, command centers, break areas
• We offer a rare private and enclosed space closed to the public during your wedding, unlike a hotel or other shared access facility

A Historic Wedding Venue

440 Elm offers the glamour and grandeur that couples traditionally seek in a historic wedding venue. Our 30' ceilings, tall arches, coffered ceilings, and hand-carved organ grate provide the sense of being in a ballroom set up for a well dressed crowd. The beautiful stained glass, bronze chandeliers, and distinctive capitals on the top of our columns also showcase the beauty of the work of the artisans of that era.

A Selection of Talented & Creative Wedding Professionals

We've focused on putting together a list of people who are excellent at what they do but may complement each other with different areas of expertise, different areas of focus, and different creative perspectives. We hope this enables both creative conversations and an ability to accommodate weddings with different specialty needs, including awareness of cultural requirements, specific cuisines, and deep relationships with relevant wedding services.

• We have curated a highly responsive and creative group of wedding professionals to help you find your creative partners of choice in music, photography, florals, and planning.
• We bring a highly experienced and creative team of culinary professionals who love to create custom wedding menus and food/ beverage experiences

In-House Package Starting Points with Ability to Extend/ Customize

• We have in-house tables and chairs that can be used for ceremony and/ or reception
• We have an in-house set of display pieces, tableware, and glassware that can be used with our catering and bar services
• We have pre-scanned the property with a 3D camera to generate a virtual walk-through and floor plans

Downtown Long Beach Wedding Venue (near Los Angeles and Orange County)

We have a historic church facility that is open to people of all faiths, beliefs, orientations, and traditions.

Our location in downtown Long Beach is a wonderful place for a wedding, with plentiful hotel rooms, beautiful oceanfront views, great restaurants, a world-class aquarium, lots of cultural activities, and plenty of parks. Our Long Beach location is convenient for wedding guests coming from Los Angeles and Orange County. Long Beach is a convenient central location with incredible freeway access across Southern California due to the Long Beach Harbor/ Ports. We are near 3 major airports: Long Beach, Los Angeles (LAX), and John Wayne/ Orange County (SNA).

Steps to Booking Your Preferred Date

1. 15 minute call to walk through the property, location, your requirements, high-level financials, etc
2. In-Person Tour (if in area)
3. Personalized Estimate
4. Contract

Resources to Explore 440 Elm

• Take a self-guided virtual tour
• RSVP for an upcoming Open House
• Check your preferred date
• Check prices (see downloadable brochure below)
• Subscribe to our newsletter
• Explore our wedding advice and inspiration content (below)