About this vendor
Celebrate your special day at Ijams Nature Center where lush green foliage and subtle sounds of nature will provide an intimate, enchanting backdrop for your ceremony.
Centrally located five minutes from downtown Knoxville, this wildlife sanctuary and green space is one of Knoxville’s treasures.
Amenities + details
Ceremony Area
Covered Outdoors Space
Dressing Room
Indoor Event Space
Liability Insurance
Outdoor Event Space
Reception Area
Handicap Accessible
On-Site Accommodations
Wireless Internet
Ceremony Types
- Civil Union
- Commitment Ceremony
- Elopement
- Interfaith Ceremony
- Non-Religious Ceremony
- Religious Ceremony
Settings
- Garden
- Historic Venue
- Park
- Trees
Venue Service Offerings
- Rentals & Equipment
- Tents
Reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help you make those big decisions with ease.
4
out of 5.04 reviews
We just had our wedding this weekend and the staff at Ijams were incredibly helpful with all they promised! Wedding planning was 100% not my thing but Katie was helpful at still ma...
king sure everything happened smoothly. This was an affordable venue for a small wedding. we had about 50 people and booked the small ceremony package. We then rented out the room in the visitor center for our reception. Only downsides are you cant really get ready ready at the venue and closing time for the reception is at 9 so everything must cleaned up before then. For the cost of everything though these weren't deal breakers for us. Also, the bartenders we hired through Ijams also did a great job. So glad we picked Ijams as our venue and Id recommend to other couples!
As Mother of the bride, I would not recommend Ijams as a wedding venue. We chose Ijams for their mission, beautiful spaces, and the services they offered. We initially worked with ...
Nathan and Sara. They were professional and outlined the services provided in a friendly manner. The services included parking attendants, staff to greet and assist guests, a bartender, an event assistant, a floor plan, and the museum would be open for our guests to tour. After a virtual tour and speaking with Nathan, we booked the home site for the ceremony and the multipurpose room for the reception.
We started having concerns about the venue when a new rental coordinator (RC) reached out about package add ons that were not available when we booked the venue. After letting the RC know we were not interested in any add ons, they reached out to my daughter saying the wedding could not happen as planned. When we reached back out asking questions we were told to never mind it was fine.
About 2 months before the wedding we reached out to the RC to rent the multipurpose room the night before the wedding to decorate. We were told there was already an event scheduled so it was unavailable. Fast forward to the wedding rehearsal at Ijams, we stopped in the visitor just before closing and there was no event taking place.
Unfortunately, the day of the wedding the weather was overcast and severe storms were expected. We decided to move the ceremony into the multipurpose room. We showed up at 9:00 am to decorate the multipurpose room for the wedding ceremony and reception to discover the room had NOT been cleaned and sanitized. This was the beginning of the problems we had the day of the wedding. Ijams was inflexible and unable to provide or suggest solutions for storing the wedding decor boxes during the event, the WiFi didn’t work, the air conditioning unit was broken, moving furniture, and parking problems.
When we returned for the wedding, there was no one greeting guests, helping them park, or assisting guests. This was important to us because the wedding had been moved from the home site to the multipurpose room.
We had to ask the guests to step out of the room between the ceremony and reception. During the initial planning, Nathan had indicated Ijams would provide help with changing over the room in the event of rain. No staff from Ijams made an appearance or offered to help with this process. Also, I asked the RC twice if the museum would be open so our guests could visit while we changed the room over for the dinner reception. While the RC had responded yes, it was actually closed. The RC refused to let appetizers be put in the hallway outside of the multipurpose room during this time to make our guests more comfortable.
At the end of the evening and after cleaning up the decor, our family was told to pick up all of the chairs and break down all of the tables.
Ijams and the RC were ill equipped to handle a wedding of 60 people. The RC made inappropriate negative remarks throughout the day about the caterer and the services provided by Ijams. The RC was unprofessional, unfriendly, and never smiled. When approached with questions or concerns the RC seemed confused and was unable to respond constructively.
At the end of the day, we paid for a dirty room with broken air conditioning and an employee who didn’t care. Ijams failed at making it a stress free day and certainly didn’t come close to providing the the serviced promised in theirwedding guide.
We worked with Nathan, Sarah, and Katie during our planning experience. We love nature and fell in love with the rustic beauty of the nature center. We were originally planning on ...
a destination wedding but due to covid that was out. Throughout the course of planning Ijams added more options to their packages and seemed to really get competitive with what they were offering compared to other venues. We were able to add on a tent package and a few other things that made planning much easier. We were so grateful that the money we did spend on the location itself went to the children's programs they run. The venue itself is on the homesite - there is a place for the ceremony overlooking a flower garden with a nice arbor, a covered wood structure (we did happy hour here), a leveled terrace (we had outdoor games here for our guests), and a tent pad area. There is space for you to store your décor prior to your wedding. Katie was great to work with in setting up all of the logistics. They do have their own staff to help with the day of as well as a bar tender (this saved us so much money by using this option). All of our guests were impressed with the set up and had a great time. Every Ijams staff member was so sweet and helpful. It also made it special because we can actually visit our wedding venue in the future for anniversaries (compared to a banquet hall).
This venue is beautiful! It is so flexible allowing you to have the type of wedding you want! What's really great is the size of venue, plus facilities and extras like bartenders a...
nd employees to help with parking--for the price!
Contact
2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN
Ijams Nature Center