ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain 

My partner and I work very busy jobs and were looking for an outdoor venue without the need for a lot of DIY-ing. ECHO was perfect – beautiful outdoor ceremony location with stunning lake views with the added fun benefit of the museum and exhibits for guests to explore. They use an exclusive caterer Sugarsnap whose food is amazing, streamlines the timeline, and does all setup/cleanup. ECHO’s coordinators are also great, communicate promptly via email and really run the show the day of (the best day of coordinator ever!). Sabiha went above and beyond, even sewing a bridesmaid’s dress and moving our ceremony under the awning at the last second for rain. All our guests (about 115) LOVED the venue and had a ton of fun being on the water for cocktail hour, exploring the exhibits, commenting it’s the best wedding food they’ve had and loving the underwater dancefloor vibes. All in all, was amazing value for the price and would 1000% choose ECHO over and over again.

What a beautiful location. Our guests enjoyed all of the indoor and outdoor offerings that ECHO provided. We had a gorgeous outdoor ceremony and cocktail hour. Our guests had so much fun dancing with the bubble tower and looking at the exhibits. Sabiha and Kelsey are wonderful, communicative, and organized. There is one exclusive caterer, Sugarsnap, who is just as easy to communicate with and provides delicious food. We would highly recommend for anyone looking for a wedding reception location!

We decide to elope here the day before my now husband graduated medical school. We wanted to end our chapter in Vermont on the highest note possible and also wanted to create a super intimate moment for both of our parents. Sabiha and the rest of the team were BEYOND words helpful. We couldn’t ask for a more amazing team.

Sabiha helped us turn off the lights (which is actually quite a process) after ECHO hours, take over speakers to play a curated playlist featuring violins, cover the halls with rose petals and 300+ candles, and even greeted both of our parents, asking them to follow the path to the top where my husband, the officiant, our dog, and I waited.

It was the most incredible moment of our lives and we couldn’t have done it without Sabiha and the ECHO team. THANK YOU. You will forever be a part of our story.

ECHO surpassed our high expectations. Excellent upstairs more intimate space for cocktails and appetizers. Access to interesting and engaging exhibits – of interest to kids and adults. Beautiful ocean-view terrace for a memorable ceremony. Large dining space with access to beautiful projector screens for video toasts or photos. Well maintained audio/visual equipment… and most of ALL

Sabiha was an effective, energetic, friendly, and cool event manager. She was fun to hang out with. She was responsive, understanding of our wants/needs, and seemed to genuinely enjoy pulling off a rewarding event. For family friendly events or special events for science or nature oriented folks, I cannot recommend the space highly enough. For others just looking for an affordable but easily run ceremony, this is the spot you’re looking for.

Further, and importantly, the go-to caterer SugarSnap is spectacular. We received comments that this was the best food folks had enjoyed at a wedding. Despite the stress of the day, I could attach a photo of my empty, previously piled on plate.

If you’re looking for an amazing venue, look no further! Vermont’s hottest wedding venue is ECHO. Great for mommies, daddies, and kiddies. This place has EVERYTHING: built-in decorations; animals in an AZA-certified setting; enough capacity for your big family propagated by your grandparents who grew up in a country with very little comprehensive sex education. Inside is sick — a figure of Champ (the sea monster who’s just like his sibling the Loch Ness Monster except American); interactive exhibits of the fun and educational sort; baby turtles and adult fish. Outside is incredible — you will LOSE IT when you see Lake Champlain at sunset with mountains in the horizon. And! ECHO is a non-profit — you know, that thing where you can feel like your money is going toward cool stuff like education and conservation.

Event coordinators Kelsey and Sabiha will take care of you from beginning to end, running the show on-site so you don’t have to, truly making you feel like a VIP. They’ll hook you up with the tastiest catering company this side of the Mississippi, who will make you cry your own tears when you see how great they are about working with what you may think is an impossible cross-section of budget and requests, but these dream makers can make it happen like less alarming Will-Smith genies. Your guests can test their physical strength or hang out with eels or get upset when they find out from a computer program what they look like as frogs. Air canons, indoor tornados, shipwrecks — and if that isn’t enough for you, you can hit the dance floor and groove with the bubble tower. What’s a bubble tower? It’s that thing that’s a glow-y pole full of bubbles. Also, ECHO will both set up and clean up all of your confetti, pool floats, and cardboard cut-outs so you don’t have to! No password needed to unlock this bonus!

[The Stefon of it all aside — We got married in September 2022, and we still now (November 2022) are getting feedback from guests about what a cool venue it was. Kelsey and Sabiha were so communicative and responsive, and they made the day stress-free. My friend told me he’s used to seeing lots of people in the reception hall at weddings, sitting around, checking their phones — but at some point he went in there and it was almost empty, because it was easy for everyone to find something fun to do. It was really important to me that the wedding was fun for both us and our guests, and ECHO was the perfect location to make that happen.]

We got married at ECHO in October 2022 and were beyond impressed with the beauty of the location, the coordination leading up to the event, and the way everything ran smoothly and easily on the day-of. Kelsey of ECHO was incredibly responsive leading up to the event, made sure to provide concise answers to all of our questions, and was a calm and kind person to work with. We chose this venue because we were planning from out of state and were unable to coordinate a lot of the small details. Between the caterer and the venue, they took the lead on running the show on the day of our wedding. From setting up decorations, to coordinating transitions during the event, to cleaning up at the end of the night– they took care of it all! We felt completely stress-free during our wedding and were able to completely enjoy the party. Our guests LOVED the space (especially the kids!) and had so much fun looking around at the exhibits during our cocktail hour. Many said it was one of the most unique weddings they had been to, and everyone was in awe of the sunset ceremony out on the deck. We wouldn’t change a thing about our ECHO wedding!