Wedding planning can certainly be stressful and a simple way to reduce stress is to use one of Houston's finest restaurants as your venue. Hosting a wedding at a restaurant is great option as a restaurant can handle the ceremony and reception, providing food, tables, and chairs — all under one roof.
To help you find the right spot for the big day, we've rounded up the ideal restaurants for hosting the perfect wedding.
As one of the city's most historic restaurants, Brennan's of Houston provides a lovely setting for a wedding ceremony and reception in the 1930s building designed by John Staub. Surrounded by oak trees, palms and ivy, the red brick courtyard would be ideal for a spring wedding and can accommodate up to 100 guests.
The ballroom — great for a reception as it can seat up to 150 guests — provides a sense of Southern luxury with chandeliers and vaulted ceilings. Brennan's modern take on Louisiana cuisine is sure to please everyone and the restaurant offers dozens of hors d'oeurve and seated dinner options, including crab cakes and their signature banana's foster.
As a long-time favorite of the city's elite, Tony's offers a luxurious, contemporary setting for a beautiful wedding ceremony. The restaurant offers plenty of venue options depending on the size of the guest list. The airy main dining room, walls replete with master artworks, seats as many 300 guests while the San Remo room can seat up to 100 and the Wine Cellar provides the perfect intimate setting for up to 60 people.
Known for their exquisite updated Italian cuisine — including favorites like the flaming red snapper or raviolo di manzo filled with braised short ribs — a seated reception at Tony's would impress anyone lucky enough to be invited.
The Grand Ballroom — also known as La Grand Salon — at the boutique hotel La Colombe d'Or has long been considered to be one of the city's premier wedding venues. Lined with 300-year-old panels from the country chateau of La Comtesse Greffulhe, as well as resplendent chandeliers, the Grand Ballroom evokes a sense of a bygone era of European royalty and splendor. The venue can accommodate hundreds of guests and is large enough to host both the ceremony and reception.
Cinq, the restaurant at La Colombe d'Or, is known for its updated take on classic French cuisine with dishes like lobster bisque with crispy crawfish tails and cedar smoked duck. An added benefit to using the hotel as a wedding venue is that the most important guests can stay on site in one of the five art-filled suites.
There are few destinations in Houston that can provide as romantic a setting for a ceremony as Rainbow Lodge, with its beautiful log structure overlooking an acre of bucolic grounds and a bubbling creek. The entire restaurant, while not large, is big enough to accommodate a more intimate wedding (around 100 people) for an outdoor ceremony and a seated reception inside.
Rainbow Lodge is known for its Southern-inspired cuisine, with hors d'oeurve options like fried Texas quail bites with bourbon gravy and entree choices such as rainbow trout with lump crab and pecan brown butter.
This long-time River Oaks restaurant with a distinctly upscale Southern feel features a lovely garden, called The Bear's Nest, that can accommodate a cozy outdoor wedding.
In terms of spaces for the reception, Ouisie's main dining room can seat up to 135 seated guests, and Lucy's Porch, which faces the garden, can accommodate up to 95.
The restaurant's fine dining take on down-home cooking includes passed hors d'oeurves like chicken fried steak on a biscuit to shrimp quesadillas and seated entrees such as crispy red snapper and grilled buffalo tenderloin.
Brenner's Steakhouse on the Bayou
A picturesque gazebo in the large, grassy field overlooking Buffalo Bayou provides the perfect pastoral setting for an outdoor wedding ceremony.
For the reception, The Loft Room at Brenner's accommodates up to 54 seated guests and includes a fireplace and private balcony. For a spring wedding, the Blue Bar — an outdoor lounge with a verdant view of the bayou — accommodates 100 seated guests or 120 for a cocktail reception.
The steakhouse menu includes dozens of passed hors d'oeurves like mini jumbo lump crab cakes and bacon-wrapped quail breasts, as well as entrees like their famous filet mignon and Gulf red snapper.
The courtyard at Brennan's can accommodate up to 100 guests for a wedding ceremony.
Grand Lux Cafe is known for its baked-to-order desserts. Grand Lux Cafe/Facebook