Bissell Tree House

A little over a year ago I suggested the Bissell Tree House as a reception venue to my sister for her wedding. I love the John Ball Zoo organization and the Bissell Tree house is stunning. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that she would end up feeling embarrassed and taken advantage of. A month before the wedding there was trouble regarding the alcohol pricing. After thinking that everything had been ironed out, also know as forking out more money. We were expecting that the event would go smoothly. Instead the drinks were subpar, very very weak, people were getting «cut off» two hours into the reception, and were refused a last call announcement. Now mind you the contract states «no last call will be made.» Don’t let this confuse you because this does not mean that last call will not be made by the bar, it means that the father of the bride, the bride and groom, the masters of ceremony, the DJ, and the wedding party will all be refused from making a last call announcement too. At the end of the night my sister and her husband felt embarrassed by the entire situation. It’s a shame that such a beautiful location would use such blatantly misleading verbiage and embarrass the bride and groom on their wedding day.

This uniquely beautiful facility, set high above the treetops overlooking Grand Rapids, is a stunning backdrop for any wedding, banquet or special event you may have. Visitors park at the John Ball Zoo main parking lot and ride the tram car up the hill, to the enter the tree house space. The creators did a wonderful job turning what I would image was previously unused grounds into a graceful textured indoor/​outdoor space with pine, floor to ceiling windows and a unique cement exterior. The wedding I attended there was smallish (about 100 people) but the space held us well and we never felt that the room too small or too big for us. The wedding ceremony was held outside on one of the patios at sunset, overlooking the Grand Rapids skyline– an image that showed up in most everyone’s pictures of the evening. The reception and dancing were all held inside, with guests spilling out to the adjacent patios for drinks at the bar.
The only glitch for the bride was that the day of the wedding she received a text about an hour before the event, that the tram, the main mode of transportation to the tree house, wasn’t working property and they were trying to restore it by the time the event started. The zoo had a back up trolley on stand by to take guests a back way. The bride said she would prefer that they fix the tram, since that is such a special part of getting to the tree house, and thankfully, that happened by the time the event started.
*Oh, and I guess should mention that guests do not get admission to the zoo (or at least we didn’t), nor is there a way to get into the zoo from the tree house (that I could see) You don’t see any animals on the tram either. The tree house appears to be a separate entity within the zoo.