We recently hosted a post-wedding brunch here after my daughter's wedding, and it was absolutely perfect! About half of our guests were from out of town and staying at the Homewood Suites next door. We didn't realize The Element by Odyssey was connected, but what a wonderful surprise it turned out to be. The food was beautifully presented and every single dish was delicious -- fresh, flavorful, and thoughtfully prepared. Our guests kept commenting on how impressed they were, and many expressed how grateful they felt to have such a lovely send-off before heading home. The atmosphere was warm and inviting, making it the perfect setting for one last gathering after a very special weekend. We couldn't have asked for a better experience. Highly recommend The Element by Odyssey for anyone looking to host an event or enjoy a meal that will truly impress. read more

We just had a two-day event at the Elements by the Odyssey this past weekend and we were so lucky to find such a beautiful banquet hall. We had 200-300 people between the two days from the Chicagoland area and out of town, everyone had positive comments and look forward to coming back next year, weather permitting. Staff was amazing to work with, drinks were at a reasonable price, food was great. I really can't say enough about them. Great job Elements and Thank you! Christy Krawisz President of the International Polka Association read more

I've been working with the wonderful people at Elements. The staff is great. Impeccable customer services. Every question and concern has been addressed right away. . We're so lucky to have found this beautiful banquet hall. Our event coordinator, Meghan, is very cordial, accommodating, creative, and very reassuring. We're throwing a very elaborate party for work and we're confident we are in safe hands. The menu the Chef has put together for our event is anything beyond what we could have come up with. I'm excited to be working with Elements. Their attention to detailed is appreciated. Thank you!!! read more

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This venue would he good for business meeting or company party. The rooms are plain and not really made for weddings. Hotel is connected to facility but no discounts on hotel rooms for events here. read more

We booked our wedding here w/ Jacqueline 1 year in advance. We wanted a sci-fi/galaxy theme w/ special decoration requests. They said "no problem" & wowed us with a pitch promising they would essentially coordinate every detail on the big day so we could sit back & enjoy our wedding. Unfortunately, those assurances couldn't have been further from the truth. I spent 2 YEARS planning & designing a unique dream wedding. I went above & beyond communicating the plans via diagrams, written instructions, & labeled boxes w/ décor. (In fact, was told I was the most organized bride she'd seen & that she wished she had that documentation for all weddings). I was on hand the days before to give help/guidance. Yet, we were completely let down in the end. Issues began 2 mo before when we couldn't get a hold of Jacqueline. Turns out she left & David was taking over. OK. David held our tasting & had to go over every detail again, because there were no notes. A few weeks later, David was gone, too. A new rep, Kelly, had us come in to meet (was 45 min late!) to go over details (AGAIN) and pay the final balance. When it was time to pay, she was unprepared so that got delayed, too. The day before, things were chaotic & we feared they couldn't handle our event. For 20 minutes they assured me everything would be fine. On wedding day, I got there 1 min before ceremony start & was SHOCKED to find guests standing confused in the hallway. The room was not ready. Took 35+ min to get things moving. After, the wedding party was to go to reception area to get drinks. Instead, we saw the gift & late night snack tables & photo booth being set up wrong. We managed to get the photo booth in the lobby where it belonged. Everything else just had to stay. Meanwhile, "cocktail" hour had no cocktails for the first 1/2 hour. Reception started 40+ min late, too. Arriving, we saw our wedding cake was destroyed (pic). We had no wine for toasts. There was a long wait before service started & between courses. Bar was a wreck: lost appx 2 hours of paid time, bartender was often on his phone & couldn't make common drinks. They must have ran out of soda & clean dishes, so cans of Coke were replaced w/ 2 liters of generic cola & they started using cheap plastic cups. Tacky. Much more-here's bullets: *Rooms not ready at check-in, welcome bags not given, room not cleaned between nights, pool closed--no notice *Day before wedding, courtyard where we planned on taking pictures WAS BEING DEMOLISHED AS I WATCHED with no notice (pic). Had to use main entrance, which wasn't mulched (so feet & dresses got dirty) & there were dumpsters/heavy equipment *Vendors couldn't work since venue wasn't ready *No head table décor first, then wrong. Missing items, table skirt falling off, table set backwards *Horrible B.O. smell by bathrooms *Caesar salad didn't have Caesar dressing *Paid $1000+ for an extra hour w/ open bar & didn't get it *Countless other decorations were never seen or incorrect-too many to list. It went on and on...we spent so much time trying to keep things moving instead of enjoying the party. We lost out on priceless time visiting w/ guests, dancing, and making good memories. Many carefully planned details & experiences never came to be. After, we were told someone would reach out. 2 days later, we planned a meeting. Then we got a call from a higher-up cancelling the appt saying, "We don't need to hear about what happened, just tell us what you want to put this behind us." Didn't think it was possible, but felt even worse after that phone call-we were completely dismissed. They did refund a portion of our event, but never heard us out. I sent suggestions on how to improve things (communication, event notes, expectations, etc) & no response. Not even a spoken apology accept for one that was wrapped in blame for our wedding being "too detailed." Thinking the mess was over, we picked up our items & found over $500 in items were missing-INCLUDING OUR WEDDING GUESTBOOK! Said they couldn't find them & weren't responsible. Had to fight, but they eventually agreed to compensate us for 1/2 of the costs of those things I could provide a receipt for. But, that doesn't make up for irreplaceable lost memories. This was the single worst service experience of my life. They feigned caring until after the event was over, then treated us like a nuisance to get rid of as quickly as possible. We just want it heard & understood that because of their service our wedding was ruined. We should be on Cloud 9--happily married & enjoying wedding memories. Instead, I am just sad about how it went. Not only do we have negative experiences overshadowing the good, but we won't even have a photo memory of our decor since nothing was set up in advance. We never saw it in person, plus was looking forward to pro shots for sharing our unique sci-fi wedding ideas via blog, Pinterest, Offbeat Bride, etc. All in all, I wouldn't recommend this venue to my worst enemy. read more

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I recently attended a wedding at Elements. The space was nice and I see why they selected it as their venue. The couple in question had planned this wedding thoroughly, thoughtfully and put every ounce of themselves into it. The details the couple brought to the service and reception were magical. However, we arrived 15 minutes ahead of the stated start time and the staff hadn't even begun to put chairs into the ceremony space. So the ceremony began significantly later than the couple had planned. That was the first of many issues caused by the staff that evening. After the ceremony ended, they were not prepared for the cocktail hour (despite having a lot more prep time than expected due to the late start on the ceremony). The guests and wedding party had to sit in their lobby for about 15-20 minutes after the ceremony ended before they opened up the bar for refreshments. And then with all this extra time, they didn't manage to get the wine on the tables for a toast before toasts. Then they took forever to get dinner going. This was a wedding that very sweetly allowed kids to come. Making littles wait late to eat is a bad call. Also, they didn't bring the kids' dishes out first so they could start immediately. There was also a REALLY lengthy wait between the salad course and the main. To be fair? The food was good. So then, the really unforgivable part. The venue lost a lot of the decorations and the guest book for the wedding. And when the couple reached out to try to resolve the issue, they weren't treated with empathy or respect. Rather, they were viewed as an irritant the venue wanted to rid themselves of as soon as possible. This venue failed on three levels: 1. Running an event in a timely manner. 2. Be organized enough to protect the items that the event hosts bring to the venue. 3. Exercise good customer service. I would warn anyone considering using this location for an event to look anywhere else before settling on Elements. read more

The Easter Brunch at Elements Conference Center was delicious. They offered a wide array of freshly prepared foods for their guest to enjoy. The food was very nicely displayed. The staff kept the food selections filled to ensure that the various items offered were always available. The omelet Chefs did a great job preparing the omelets just like we wanted them. The bar selection was terrific. Bartenders were friendly and helpful allowing the guest the opportunity to build their own Bloody Mary (or other beverages) just the way they liked them. It made it a fun and creative experience. We never felt rushed while dining and the wait staff was right at your table removing plates and glassware while checking if we needed anything. The price for the brunch was very competitive and well worth it. Great food, friendly service, with a nice atmosphere topped off with a terrific bar. We will be back !! read more

This is our second year with Elements for our yearly fundraiser. I do not know what happened between this year and last year but this year was terrible. They raised the price of the plates almost $7 and repaid us with some of the worst service we have experienced in our MANY dealings with multiple venues over our 20 years of fundraising. The day started with the room not being set up at the prescribed time, the apathetic staff more meandering about rather than continuing setup - and things went downhill from there. No one could operate the lighting system in the room and we were forced to figure it out and operate it ourselves. Dinner was not only late but took 1 1/2 hours to be completely served. Tables were half served, others at the same table waited 1/2 hour to 40 minutes for their meals while others ate. The staff was partly dressed in jeans, of the three bartenders promised in our contract, we occasionally had two, much of the time just one. The bar ran out of some drinks early in the night. Repeated requests for things like coffee, creamer, and sugar went unsatisfied. A portion of the wait staff could not even speak English well enough to full fill requests from our attendees. The rest were abrupt and rude and act as though they had been called back from a Cabo vacation to serve our event. It was, as I said above, one of the worst venue experiences we have had. We paid a HEFTY gratuity fee for this event. Gratuity for service that was NOWHERE NEAR worth the thousands we paid. My advice to Elements would be that if you are going to raise prices, the service had best follow suit. We are already looking for a different venue for next year's event. We will never go back to Elements. read more

I am Ryan H's husband, and I felt the need to post the rest of the story as there is a limit on the amount you can write. There was so much that went wrong that we needed to put it into 2 reviews. I will start by saying that if you read other positive reviews talking about how amazing their wedding was working with Jacqueline and David, don't let them fool you. They are both no longer working at the location, and the crew that took over are not even close to the same caliber. On the wedding day, I arrived at about 1:30 pm, which was 3 hours before the ceremony was to start, only to find that nothing had been done yet. With about an hour before the wedding was to start, Ryan down to the room with me to look at the progress that was being made and still there was almost nothing done. The dance floor vendor was told to be at the venue at 2:45 to setup the vinyl covering. The dance floor wasn't even setup at this time and the vendor had to wait for an hour to even get started. Speaking of this vendor, Elements was supposed to setup this time for them to come, but they didn't follow through with that. We had to arrange the time for them to come and listen to excuses as to why Elements couldn't get ahold of the vendor. At 4:20, the groomsmen and I went down to the ceremony room. I was SHOCKED to find all the room was not ready. And not only was it not ready, they saw me enter the room and started to ask me questions about things that had already been gone over. I was visibly frustrated and concerned that nothing was going to get done. My wife's nieces, who were excited to be "ushers" and hand out programs weren't able to do anything (they were so disappointed!). This also meant that no one really got to see the funny and personal wedding programs that we had taken the time and expense to create. It took at least a 1/2 hour to sort things out and get things moving. After promises from Kelly that she would be at the event the entire time, I was irritated when I was unable to find her. She did eventually come, but it was nearly 7:30 and there was already so much that had gone wrong. And unsurprisingly, we hadn't been given the bridal room key until I found Kelly and asked her for it. I was disappointing to have to hunt down something like the key after being told that it would be brought to us numerous times over the previous weeks. The morning after, we found all our items being packed up by people from another event's group and they were like "Was this your wedding last night????----you didn't clean up after it!" as they were all handling our items. I explained to them that Elements staff was responsible for the packing up--but they were obviously upset w/ us. Not really fair to us to have to deal w/ that. I don't think we were expected to stay all night in wedding dress and tuxedo and disassemble the head table and décor.... And when my wife's brother wrote a review on their Facebook fan page, which was respectful, yet honest, they took down their page completely within an hour of posting it! And today when I went to pick up the last of stuff. These items were extremely important to us and were custom made sci-fi ships commissioned from an artist. I picked them up and when I got home, I looked in the boxes to find that one of them was missing. This makes for pretty much all the really cool and important decorations being missing or partially missing. The worst part of the whole experience was seeing my wife's dream wedding crushed at every turn and every special moment. I could have dealt with all these issues with the venue on my own, but watching how much it hurt my wife crushed me. I couldn't do anything and the fact that my wedding was tainted by all the errors and broken promises made me feel helpless. The final straw was that greed won and an event was booked right before our wedding that should not have been booked. The logistics of getting things flipped from that event to our wedding were impossible. Instead of passing on the other booking in order to make good on our wedding event that you previously scheduled in, someone decided that bringing in a few extra bucks was more important than our once-in-a-lifetime wedding. Even people on your staff have told me to my face that the event prior to ours should not have been booked. In addition to that, when Leeson's dropped of the cake, they told me that in all the weddings they had done at Elements, it had never not been such a mess so close to the event start (this was an hour before guest arrival and pretty much nothing was done). The hotel front desk staff said they had never seen anything like this disaster before. I guess we were the "lucky" ones where everyone decided that our wedding wasn't important. I am extremely disappointed with my experience at Elements and would never recommend this venue to anyone. This has been the worst customer service experience I have ever had. The worst by miles. read more

My cousin and her hubby got married and had their reception at Elements. There were sooo many problems. Many in sure I don't even know. I know for sure the wedding started late. Then cocktail hour was running behind and all the guests were just hanging out in the entry way. They had issues with things (like the wedding room and dance floor) not being set up on time. The food was really yummy but, very slow! I know our table asked for a few extra things (like butter And rolls) and idk if we ever got them. The very, very worse thing is they lost MANY irreplaceable items from the wedding! And they had an awesome sci-fi themed wedding so many things were custom made! They lost the guest book, custom made signs, ships and many other things! I cannot imagine what they have gone through! Oh, and now to top it all off. There GM will no longer speak to them about these problems. I feel so bad knowing that their wedding experience will be forever tarnished by Elements and their horrible customer service! read more

My son and (new) daughter-in-law selected Elements in Orland Park for their wedding reception. Wow! Amazing! Perfect! Jacqueline Nitsche and her team, the chef and his team, and the hotel (Homewood Suites) staff treated me and my family and our guests like royalty. From planning to execution, they were helpful, consultative, and very patient with all of our questions, requirements and changes - some at the last minute. The banquet room was very elegant. The appetizers were scrumptious (the grilled cheese and tomato soup was awesome). The dinner was creative and delicious. The entire program on the big day, from start to finish, was flawless. No detail was missed or overlooked. I highly recommend Elements Banquet and Conference Center for your next event or party. read more