Photo by Teresa Williams
About RPM Events
Welcome to RPM Events, downtown Chicago’s premier wedding destination. Our venue offers more than 6,000 square feet overlooking the Chicago River, including a grand ballroom that can be divided into three intimate spaces, access to a beautiful outdoor terrace, and a fully customizable culinary experience showcasing the very best of RPM Restaurants.
When your guests arrive, they’ll be welcomed through a private entrance into our main foyer before descending the staircase, passing our Pre-Function room and your own dedicated Wedding Suite, before stepping into the heart of the celebration: our stunning Grand Ballroom. We can host up to 250 guests for a seated dinner or 425 for a reception, and if you’re envisioning something more intimate, the space is easily customizable. No matter the size of your guest list, you’ll have panoramic views of the Chicago River and exclusive access to the terrace throughout your event.
One of the most exciting parts of planning your wedding with us is creating a menu that reflects your style.
You’ll be able to mix and match signature dishes from RPM Italian, RPM Steak, and RPM Seafood, everything is crafted by our executive chef team and tailored to your tastes. Think seated dinners or interactive stations, passed bites, custom dessert carts, and more. And when it comes to drinks, our award-winning wine director, Richard Hanauer, will help you select the perfect pairings to toast your big day.
Staying Sustainable
We are honored to be part of the Green Wedding Alliance, and celebrate our sustainable efforts. From our leaders down, making the space we work in greener and more sustainable is a goal we are constantly working on and improving.
All of our menus, contracts and BEOs are shared digitally to potential and existing clients. For all internal meetings, emails of the document are shared for review if they are not accessible from the shared google drive.
At the end of every night, the closing manager will walk through the space to turn off all lights and unplug/ reset anything that will not be in use.
All lighting in the RPM Events space has been converted to energy efficient alternatives.
As a building, we participate in a paper recycle program called Shredit. Ink cartridges are sent back to the vendor to refill and sent back to stores. We try to eliminate shipping containers and will re-use at any point we are able to.
We are proud members of the Waste Not program. Throughout the year, we have successfully composted 423,570 lbs. 19,059 gallons of gas have been diverted through the use of electric vehicles. 291,644 lbs of glass recycled, 15 tons of cardboard bailed.
We try to eliminate the need for driving as often as we are able to. The catering Team has invested in carts and other supplies to allow us to walk deliveries throughout the local area. If there is a need to drive anywhere outside of the local area, we always carpool and use electric vehicles.
RPM Events is proud to source locally and ethically in as many areas as we can. A few of our proud partners are Day Boat Scallops, Hamma Hamma Oysters, Butternut Sustainable Farm, Vintage Prairie Farm, Nichols Farm & Orchard, Sustainable Sips etc.
We are also proud to be members of the Illinois Food Scrap and Composting Coalition.
While our Chef team is curating the menus for the upcoming year, they try to create dishes that have overlapping ingredients throughout RPM Events, Pizzeria Portofino and RPM Seafood. By looking at the building as a whole, we can streamline ordering and prep to make sure nothing is wasted. In addition to this, the team will strategically plan out seasonal menus to keep our foods fresh, local and available for the season it is needed.
As a company, we share materials such as an in house bakery which will produce breads, desserts and guest favors in house. This helps to eliminate the need to order from larger companies. RPM Events is proud to house this particular department in our building.
We have moved away from single use plastics and opted for biodegradable alternatives. All of our carryout bags are reusable.
As a part of the new hire training process, we dedicate a portion to teaching our team the values of composting,recycling and eliminating the waste for our venue.
Our Chef team assigns specific prep needs based on the specific group sizes to prevent over prepping and reducing our waste. Any food prep overages will be filtered through our neighboring restaurants above & below us to eliminate mass waste.
RPM Events has invested in a CNSRV device which safely conserves 98% of the water required to defrost frozen food. This is used to help prep food quicker and eliminates the need to run warm water until the food is at the desired temperature.
We encourage our clients to utilize in house supplies when at all possible. We have invested in linens, decor, staff to direct guests (avoiding paper signage), reusable candles, vases, cake stands, food displays, table pinspotting etc. By encouraging guests to use our supplies. This eliminates the need for many different vendors having to come to the venue to set up and then return for strike or having our clients purchase single use decor.
