Norfolk Botanical Garden

WOW!!! I had such a beautiful and amazing experience. The garden was absolutely gorgeous. I did my 20 year vow renewal ceremony there. It was like a dream. Everyone worked together to make sure everything went off without a hitch. The event planner was absolutely great. She was very sweet and patient and very easy to work with. Even when we went over our rental time, she was still very patient with us. I would do it all again if i could do it there. I will never forget this experience.

Had our wedding there on May 28, 2011 at 4pm. The garden was perfect and staff was friendly. Being the groom i was there about 45 mins prior so I was able to see that the garden had sent over a staff member to help our coorinator with the little things and stayed for the entire wedding. They were very flexibility when it came to letting up go over the time to take pictures. The only bad thing was that since we went over 20 to 30 mins to take pictures they keep the $150 refunded deposit but I didn't mind just as long as we was able to get the pics. All in all it was great, I highly recommend.

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!

Although the Botanical Gardens was beautiful I found it hard to receive feedback about my wedding. I would email details and not receive a response until I called a week later. The price for the event is also a little ridiculous. Above a thousand dollars to rent a site for two hours.... Especially when nothing special is having to be done, it is just simply the natural decor of the gardens. If looking at this venue be weary of changing the date, especially if you are military. We encountered some problems with this even though every other vendor we had for our wedding was willing to cooperate.

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...! :)

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

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.

Beatiful venue. Stuff provided everything we requested.

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.

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!

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.

I did not end up using The gardens and was so glad I didn't. They were way too pushy. I came in to check things out and see how much things cost and they wanted me to sign a contract! They were REALLY expensive and did seem like they cared about what I wanted but were more concerned with bringing in money. I found it ridiculous that they wanted to charge so much for a rain site and that I could not even seen my reception room due to construction. I was an out of town bride so just stopping back in wasn't an option. I am SO glad I didn't have my wedding there. I think I would have been so disappointed.

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!

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.

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.

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).

Great venue

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 Botanical Gardens were.... awful. I planned my wedding a year in advanced and through the process we went through three wedding coordinators at the Botanical Gardens because they kept either getting fired or quitting, so it was very hard to figure out who to talk to when we had a question. Each time it was someone new and more moody than the last. Also, the last time that we met with them to go over the final plans, they changed everything that they had promised regarding when we could begin having access to the garden, the times and numbers of the trams, everything. I had to bring my baby niece along since my mom was babysitting her and the wedding coordinator automatically assumed that she was mine and rolled her eyes. People think she is mine a lot, which I understand, but it was terrible for her to judge me for it. I felt so awful during the whole meeting.As it turned out, it rained on my wedding day so we didn't get to use the garden. It may have been a good time because they may have screwed everything up. We were supposed to get a year's pass for free, but they never sent it. Basically, it was an awful experience with them, we paid a lot of money, and got nothing in return at all.The staff was unapproachable, rude, always late to meetings (the first girl acted like we didn't even have a meeting and never apologized for being an hour late), and acted like they were doing you the biggest favor in the world. I wouldn't suggest it.

Overall it was a bad experience. One employee promised things that management did not agree with- it was very hard to deal with.