Bok Tower Gardens

Bok Tower is no only incredibly beautiful the staff is incredible to work with. Rita and Danny really went above and beyond to ensure that this was the most incredible day of our lives, and they succeeded. I highly recommend Bok Tower as a hidden gem wedding venue in Florida.

I had my wedding here last year. I still think choosing Bok Tower Gardens as my venue was one of my best ideas for my wedding. It was everything I dreamed

I am so blessed to be able to say that I got married at Bok Tower Gardens. It is such a magical place that has a lot of history and positivity with their mission of conservation and stewardship of the environment. They are continually making improvements and keeping the gardens relevant with bell concerts and events. The staff is very pleasant to work with a treated me like a princess on my special day! They had golf carts to take the bridal party to picture locations and the guests up to the reception and ceremony areas. They were all very helpful and involved in making sure everything was running smoothly. Rita, the main wedding coordinator person, is very helpful and thorough even though she is not in the office all of the time. Another great thing about Bok Tower is they set up all of the tables and chairs for you at no extra charge! I chose the Olmstead House as my reception space and everything turned out beautiful!! It doesn't look super glamorous from the outside but I personally believe it is the best choice for the reception if you have 70 guests or less. The lighting and floor plan on the inside is very aesthetic and a great blank slate for decorating. It is also the least expensive! I chose Swan Pointe (gold door side of tower) as my ceremony space and it was stunning. There is no mulch on that side which is good for long trains on wedding dresses! For the vendors, you have free reign on everything except for catering. I am so glad we only had a few choices for caterers, because the one we ended up picking (Millenia) could not have been better!!! (Please see my review for Millenia on their page). Overall, my experience with Bok Tower was perfect and I can't think of a more breathtaking location to have a wedding! My husband and I will also be enjoying our free year membership we got for having the wedding there. :)

We visited Bok Tower right before we go engaged and instantly knew it was where I wanted to get married. The grounds are beautiful and provide many great places for photos. We had our ceremony in the Sundial Overlook garden. The shade in the area made our guests more comfortable on the warm day. Bok Tower provided shuttles to and from the ceremony for our guests. We also used the visitor's center for our cocktail hour and reception. Our guests loved the unique and beautiful gardens.

I was so happy to get married here in the gardens. It was truly a breathtaking place from our first visit to ceremony and beyond. The romantic and historic feel of the tower and the gardens were perfect. We used the sundial garden for the ceremony and visitors center for the reception. Rita was great with calling back to answer questions and with receiving the flower and catering deliveries on the day of the wedding. We wanted 200+ people there so it was a tight squeeze for the reception, but a great time nonetheless! Capacity says up to 200/300 but they can only hold up to 120 if everyone wants to be seated for the reception. We used high tops and created more of a mingling atmosphere. They provided 100 chairs for the ceremony and the chairs and tables for the recepetion. We paid for the additional rental chairs for the ceremony. We thought it was a little expensive, but as far as weddings CAN run, it was affordable. You pay for the incredible beauty of the grounds. It also includes free entry and parking for all guests. AND if you choose to get married there, you get a free year long membership which is actually good for multiple botanical gardens across the state!

Perfect

I had my wedding here in early March... pretty much the only time to have an outdoor wedding in Florida in my opinion. Everything is in bloom at Bok Tower in March so that also makes for very pretty scenery. Not to mention the beautiful views you have behind the tower. Bok Tower is located in Lake Wales, which is one of the hilliest cities in Floriday. With its huge oak trees and the scent of orange groves in the air... this was the perfect setting for our wedding! It was very breezy on the day of our wedding which was good and bad. It meant that people couldn't hear us very well during our vows but it also meant that everything got to blow in the wind, including the moss hanging from the huge oak trees behind the tower. We chose to have our ceremony overlooking the orange groves behind the tower... it was so majestic and many people said that it was the best wedding they had ever been to. I was late to the ceremony (of course) so my guests were waiting for about 30 minutes but they told me later that they didn't mind one bit because it was so nice outside. We had our reception at the information center and it was perfect. I wasn't sure that it was all going to come together but all my vendors did a great job and the place looked amazing. There were a couple times when I thought Rita was unfriendly, but I think that's just her personality. She was a bit happier on our wedding day though :)

The people at Bok Tower were amazing. I'm not so sure the gardens are kept to the standard I used to remember. It is very pricey to hold a wedding here. I wouldn't suggest a wedding if its not in spring. Mine was in August and it was horribly hot. Also, I would have been willing to put off my wedding time if they had told me I could use their reception facilities after Bok Tower hours.