Garvan Woodland Gardens

itself for obvious reasons, but the surrounding gardens are just as beautiful and serene as the chapel. We took advantage of this by getting as many photos in the gardens beforehand as possible and they all turned out amazing! It was the perfect setting for our wedding and many months later our guests still talk about how incredible it was. For this we are truly grateful. The nearby grooms- and brides-quarters are a nice inclusion and work great for getting ready spaces. They even offer a golf cart rental to help usher people with limited mobility from the nearby parking lot down to the chapel and back. In the year-long planning process leading up to our wedding day the communication with the different wedding coordinators at the gardens was a bit rocky and left us confused or mistaken multiple times, but we were able to work through it for the most part. It didn’t help that multiple coordinators quit during our process and we only found out by emailing or calling and getting a response from someone new, who didn’t know much about our prior communications. Overall, and aside from the rocky communication, the gardens and chapel are an incredible setting and we would definitely recommend this place to anyone looking for a stunning venue for their wedding.

lutely STUNNING, and we chose tulip season, adding to the beauty of the gardens. HOWEVER, the coordinator we signed our contract with no longer works at the venue; in fact all of the staff is new. No one knows what’s going on, in fact, they can’t even find my contract. Luckily, I have copies of everything. They are now not returning my deposit or phone calls, and no one will tell us why. The coordinator there even admitted that she is trying to eliminate weddings at the venue. So while our wedding was perfect and our photos will be stunning, it is entirely inappropriate to approach a bride on her wedding day and threaten to keep the deposit because you cannot find the contract.

, this does not last. We read some reviews about the chapel stating it's beautiful, but there are issues. So we initially looked elsewhere. However we later noticed on the website they allowed booking ceremonies at the Koi pond. My wife's dream location for our ceremony was the Koi pond, so this was a no brainer. We went and visited and were told they felt like having chairs for people would be difficult because of the slope of the lawn, however if we had chairs the maximum would be somewhere around 20 to 40. We then asked about how many people there we would be limited to if we didn't have chairs on the lawn and people could sit or stand as they liked. We were told several times, "As long as no one is trampling flowers you can have as many people as you want." So my wife and I contemplated whether or not we wanted to have a small intimate ceremony with chairs or invite everyone to the ceremony and let them sit/stand on the lawn. We decided we would rather have everyone at the ceremony. We signed a contract with the venue that had no limit on the amount of people we could invite. This was almost a year prior to the ceremony. Fast forward to 30 days before the ceremony, well after save the dates and invites had gone out, well after we had RSVPs from everyone. They told us the MAX we could have at the Koi pond for the ceremony was 40. I reminded them what they told us and they dropped our max down to 20 instead! I asked her to let me talk to our wedding planner to see if we could figure out what to do (at this point I didn't want to bother my wife with this news because she had enough stress to deal with with other things going on with the wedding) and after agreeing to give me time to talk to our wedding planner, she proceeded to send an email to my wife suggesting other parts of the property to have the ceremony. So she went around me and our wedding planner and contacted my wife directly introducing an undue amount of stress instead of me or our wedding planner being able to talk to her about the issue. This is alone unacceptable behavior. We then had to have a lawyer look over our contract and tell them we had brought one board and suddenly they were singing a different tune. "Oh there's just not enough room, but we'll do whatever we need to to get everyone there!" So things seemed to be solved. The day before our wedding, at the rehearsal they started alluding to the fact that they were going to count all the guests and once they reached 40 stop letting people on the lawn. Day of the wedding, I was standing next to the entrance to the lawn and sure enough, once there were around 40 people they started telling guests they needed to stand on the walkway on the OTHER SIDE of the koi pond. Any guests here would not have been able to hear the ceremony. And that location was behind the officiant. I had to raise my voice and get upset with them for them to back off. This experience seems to be about on par with other reviews I have read for the venue. In the end, we went around the staff and had over 80 people on the lawn. There was room for at least double that. If you do book here be ready to have to fight for what they promised you. Venue is beautiful, property management is terrible.

and also had the reception at the Bridal Hall (which is also the perfect place for getting ready). We were married in the fall, so you could see the beautiful fall colors through the glass chapel. For such a beautiful venue, it was very reasonably priced!