Zilker Botanical Garden

Botanical Gardens is just beautiful! There is a list of limitations when it comes to decorations etc when you have your wedding there, but for my husband and I, that wasn't a big deal. We had our ceremony there and it was just beautiful. You do not need decorations per say, because the garden itself is the "decorations". We were limited to only 8 chairs, which the gardens provided, so all guests had to stand other then 8 family members. We were fine with that since our ceremony was small and private. The staff wasn't the greatest; a little unorganized and didn't return calls/emails. I had to call at least two times, or email at least two times in order for them to get back to me. All and all, I would recommend Botanical Gardens because it is a beautiful venue to have a ceremony at, but the staff is a different story.

April 20, we had our wedding ceremony here in the rose garden and it was the most beautiful place ever, and the smell of the roses WOW!

One of the prettiest places in Austin!

We really love Zilker Park. In fact, my husband proposed to me in the Zilker greenbelt. So it made sense for us to have our wedding at the Zilker Botanical Garden...except they do not allow chairs anywhere in the gardens. This was a real bummer and turned out to be a deal breaker for us b/c we couldn't imagine not having chairs for our guests during the ceremony. So we decided to have the ceremony at Umlauf and the reception at Zilker. This turned out fine, and only a little extra money since the prices at Zilker are reasonable. Julye Evans, the event manager, was good to work with. She was clear about almost all of the policies. The main problem I had was when my husband and I arrived at Zilker after just being married, the MOD (not July, but one of her staff) actually approached me a told me that there was a problem with the glasses the guests were using. Later when I talked with my caterer, she said that never in her 16 years of doing weddings has a MOD approached a bride and has always come to her. I thought this man's actions were terribly inappropriate and upset me at the worst moment. Also, for the life of me, I cannot remember Julye ever telling me the guests couldn't bring glasses to the gardens, even though we talked several times about our intent to have the toast there (we even paid extra to rent out that space). I wouldn't work with David again, but would with Julye.