Norfolk Botanical Garden

Beatiful venue. Stuff provided everything we requested.

The staff at the botanical gardens was so helpful through everything! The location was beautiful even though we had to use the rain site facility. I would absolutely recommend reserving the rain site in case something were to happen. It was beautiful!

Great place to have an outdoor wedding. You guests would have acres of gardens to stroll through and enjoy the outdoors. Don't forget to stop by the eagle's nest in the park. There is also an observation telescope there. Also, you can take your guests on a boat tour.

Gardens is that we were asked to leave promptly after our ceremony time was finished. Regardless of the pictures that we wanted to take or the guests that we were trying to speak to. Unfortunate, but it is business after all.The location was beautiful even though we had to use the rain site facility. I would absolutely recommend reserving the rain site in case something were to happen. It was beautiful!

Great venue

Norfolk Botanical Garden is on the pricey side, but wow, have you seen the grounds?! It is so beautiful. My ceremony looked amazing with nothing but some chairs, a few rented columns, and a couple of ferns. I always wanted to have an outside cermony and the NBG made that possible. The Garden Cafe was the perfect place to have an outdoor reception and Paul is the best. If you have the money, the Norfolk Botanical Garden is the definitely the place to have your wedding!

The woman who deals with the actual booking of the gardens is absolutely amazing, she was very detailed and professional. her staff that is supposed to assist the bride and her party upon arrival was an hour late and was very disorganized. She almost drove me up to the front of the garden instead of dropping me off at the back. I wish the rain site was refundable if you did not use it, but I am glad we had it since It was down pouring the morning of and cleared before the ceremony.

The Norfolk Botanical Garden was very friendly and helpful when it came to our reception. Highly recommended if you are in the market for an outdoor wedding. Price seemed a little high, but was better than many other comparable venues.

The norfolk botanical gardens were the perfect place for my reception. i married in the end of july and their gardens were perfect. we had the whole place to our self for our evening wedding. The coordinator was a great help and meat with us periodically to make sure everything went well for the day. they allowed us to come in for engagement pics and also to show my family the site before the wedding day. They provided us with a coordinator for the evening and she helped everything run smoothly.

I loved the Botanical gardens for my reception and for my bridal pictures! My reception was held overlooking a rose garden and had a gazabo looking out over the gardens. It was big enough for all 150 of my guests. there was plenty for space for wine, a picture signing table, presents table, dj and dance floor as well as the buffet line, chocolate fountain, guests tables! It was so beatiful and the staff helped make my day.

We had to schedule the date of the wedding a year in advance because the vendor was on such a high demand. The set up was beautiful. And had plenty of room for our 200+ guests with dancing room as well. Very elegent and accommedation. And the parking was great too!

One of the most beautiful places to have a wedding. Just have to plan far in advance.

Beautiful place, with the reception right there too! The only really bad thing was when they took the flowering vines off of the arbor a week before the wedding and didn't replace them. We had to scramble to get a flowered arch at the cost of our florist.

The Norfolk Botanical Gardens was an absolutely beautiful place to have a wedding. It was also very cost effective.On our wedding day, we received a free upgrade to white chairs (instead of brown, which usually cost at least a $1.00 more per chair for the white ones). Stephanie (the wedding coordinator at the Botanical Gardens) always responded promptly to my e-mails and telephone calls which was a blessing.Luckily for us, no airplanes took off or landed during our ceremony. :)The only bad thing I will say about the Botanical Gardens is that we were asked to leave promptly after our ceremony time was finished. Regardless of the pictures that we wanted to take or the guests that we were trying to speak to. Unfortunate, but it is business after all.

The NBG was an absolutely gorgeous setting for both my wedding ceremony & reception. People could not stop talking about how pretty everything was! There were lots of options as far as gardens go for the ceremony, and the Rose Garden Hall was a great venue for reception as it allowed for guests to be inside or out overlooking the Rose Garden. I love the black & white floors in the reception hall, too! What I did not like about working with NBG was their inflexibility with EVERYTHING. I understand having policies and sticking to them, but I just never felt like they were really trying to help me make my day special and memorable at all. For example, I wanted to have the tram take our guests around the loop to just see the rest of the gardens (not get out, just look at from the tram) before the reception and they said no. We also asked if they could have an employee to staff their new butterfly "greenhouse" which was right next to my ceremony site, and they said no. They didn't even have a wheelchair available for use for elderly guests, and my garden was a HIKE from the parking lot when we were doing the rehearsal. It just felt like they didn't allow for anything creative or personal to be added to your day...didn't even want to consider it. They also don't set up the tables & chairs for the reception, your caterer (or whomever) has to do that...so you're paying all that money just for the room itself and an events staff person to just be there all night. It was nice to get half off the ceremony site if we booked our reception there. Stephanie was always very quick to respond to my email questions so that was great. Overall it was a beautiful setting but they were a little hard to work with at times. But, I do appreciate having policies and following them and as a business I understand why that's important...it just felt confining at times!! But the wheelchair thing, that is just ridiculous...! :)

The botanical gardens were absolutely beautiful. We used the Renaissance court for the ceremony in front of the fountain and love how all of our pictures turned out. Everything was so full of blooms and well kept. Not to mention that the gardens had just replaced some of the stone work for the pillars which turned out beautiful. Our reception was in the Azalea tea room since we love the small site with the beautiful patio overlooking the japanese maples. The room was very quaint and had a seperate room for the buffet and cake. The patio literally made everything so wonderful. The breeze was perfect on the patio and our guests felt as though they could mingle both inside and out. If I could redo this day, I would not change my wedding site. The only downside to this location is that the wedding coordinators changed several times in the process of our planning. The contracts were screwed up and policies were changed in the time that we had signed our contract. I am however appreciative that they honored our original contract and everything turned out perfect.

The Norfolk Botanical Gardens is an undeniably beautiful place to get married. My husband and I chose the Renaissance Court, which overlooks a fountain and some lovely statuary. As our photos attest, the area was serene and beautiful, the perfect setting for our day.However, the service provided by NBG was lax and unresponsive. I had to call several times to correct my billing, as the office incorrectly processed my payment. I also had to correct the time set up for the wedding although I had previously filled out all the correct forms.The value for the amount of money is also debatable; NBG charges a hefty sum just for an hour rental, and then tacks on additional fees for even simple items like white chairs! Far more expensive is transportation (it's a long walk to the Renaissance Court), and a rain-site deposit. The rain site, by the way, is the less than stunning rotunda.Most distressing was the insistence of the staff that they were unable to provide a private room for me to change in. They offered the public restroom as the best bet. I ended up changing in the outside public restroom in an outbuilding. Honestly, I paid almost a thousand dollars for one hour of time at the garden, and they can't let me use a spare office to zip up my gown? It's egregious. If I had to do it again, I'd go with a far more wedding-friendly venue.

Norfolk Botanical Garden is a beautiful setting for an outdoor wedding ceremony. We also rented the Rose Garden Hall for our reception site. In hindsight, I probably would not have used this reception location, as the fees are very high and really only provide for rental of the space and tables/chairs. Dressing room rental is an extra fee, and the "dressing rooms" are classrooms used to teach botanical classes. I knew this going into it; however, I would have expected tables and chairs to be pushed to the edges of the room to allow for space to get dressed, as well as some type of window covering (we had to scramble to find a sheet to hang over the large window that looks out into the common hallway). Additionally, three different wedding coordinators were hired and then left the company during the 11 months that I planned my wedding. I only discovered that the wedding coordinator had changed when I called with a question or showed up for an appointment (I was never notified ahead of time).

The Garden was a beautiful wedding site.But I did not like some things such as the hidden charges, the employees, confusion of payments and the rain site fee. I was bounced around from one employee to another, I would work with one that was my "planner" but come back to meet with yet another because the other either was fired or her workload was just too full. First I was with a woman who was rather rude and spoke down to my husband and I, treating me like I was a child. Then we came back expecting the same women but instead got a young woman who screwed up our contract. We got a call saying that she gave us the wrong price and we owed them a significant amount of money in addition to what we already paid and contracted to. Finally we were paired with a wonderful women who was so kind and understood what she was doing.I feel that some of the "perks" I was charged for was a bit rediculous. Having to pay extra for chairs and then extra on top of that to have them be white instead of brown after I was already paying a huge amount to have the ceremony there just seemed unfair. There were a few more extra charges, but we decided not to go along with them.Also I would always recieve letters saying I did not pay when I payed my payments early every time they were due. They just seemed very unorganized in how they ran their business. I also did not like the rain site fee. I can see putting money down for something. But the charge for the rain site was just rediculous. If it rained, I would have paid thousands of dollars for the garden and hundreds of dollars for the rain site and instead of having the gardens I would get a small room to have my reception. And the payments were non refundable. So I would be paying thousands of dollars on a small room which I could have gotten anywhere for not nearly half as much. All in all .. my wedding was amazing. Everyone still talks about how beautiful it was.. but it took ALOT to work with the gardens.

Not worth the money. Everything turned out beautiful. But they did not do a great job of ensuring that my day went smooth. No one was tehre on site to help, the tram carrying our guests arrived after the wedding had started, my escort was late and they were doing construction on our garden and did not tell anyone. I am very lucky that I had an excellent wedding coordinator if not everything would have been a disaster. My one reccommendation if you do decide that have your wedding their, expect ugly white metal chairs bc they don't have a storage for others to be brought in and rent a PA system. It was very hard to hear with all the planes flying over.