The Arboretum of Los Angeles Reviews

I dreamed of a romantic outdoor wedding that is both accessible and close to nature, we surveyed many popular locations in SoCal, nothing came even close to what the LA Arboretum can offer! The grounds are meticulously well kept and there are endless beautiful spots for photos, as well as an assortment of locations to choose from for the event. For our July wedding of 150, we chose the Rose Garden for the ceremony and Aryes Hall for reception. The Arboretum foundation provides the venue, the on-site caterer The Fresh Gourmet provides the catering, rentals, and service. Carlos and the team at Fresh Gourmet are extremely capable and showed genuine care and dedication to make sure our special day was everything we had dreamed of. The food was delicious, our guests had a blast! We couldn't thank them enough. Highly recommend!

We had our wedding here on 7/9/23 and we couldn't have asked for a better experience and a more beautiful venue. We had our ceremony in the gazebo on the Event Lawn, and the reception at the Peacock Cafe. We were able to take beautiful photos all around the arboretum.

Carlos and Nicole who run the on-site Peacock Cafe also take care of weddings, and they were AMAZING! Carlos helped us set up all the logistics and made sure everything we wanted was able to happen. Nicole made us a completely vegan menu (dumpling-based buffet( that was DELICIOUS! She was lovely to work with and we couldn't believe this was her 2nd-ever vegan wedding. Everyone raved about the food!

Altogether we were so happy with our experience here. Carlos and Nicole are incredibly kind and are excellent at their jobs. They also helped us secure a wonderful DJ and helped us plan a beautiful wedding while staying in budget. The whole staff at the Arboretum made the night go amazingly smoothly. I couldn't recommend them enough!

I've been going to the LA Arboretum since I was a child, and it was so special for me to have our wedding and reception there. Lucky for me, the Arboretum is also one of the most cost effective places to get married in LA County. The staff was very professional, and always answered promptly by phone. The Rose Garden was a gorgeous location for the ceremony. We had a flyover of two geese during our vows that everyone talked about afterwards. We loved having so many options for beautiful backgrounds for photos, especially the grand old oak trees. The Peacock Cafe was incredibly accommodating, allowing us to use the existing tables, chairs, and lighting, and to save on renting a dance floor by using the interior of the cafe. The photos of The Peacock Cafe at dusk are stunning, too. One of the best parts about getting married at the Arboretum is that we can go back whenever we like. I'm looking forward to bringing our children there one day, too.

The sites at the Arboretum speak for themselves. All were equally breathtaking making it difficult to choose one. Planning and working with the coordinator Veda was easy and straightforward. The vendors they recommended were equally accommodating and professional. It was a wonderful experience and made our event so special in so many ways. We will be back to visit the gardens as guests for years to come.

This is perfect place for outdoor wedding!! You don't need to pay for fancy flower decoration because this place is beautiful without decoration!!! I recommand rose garden for ceremony and sunset garden for reception.

This location is beautiful!! We had our ceremony in the rose garden and the reception in the Peacock Cafe. We also took pictures in many different spots of the arboretum. Everything came out absolutely wonderful and beautiful.

This venue is beautiful. I had my wedding on the meadow across from the waterfall, and held my reception on the patio of the Peacock Cafe. It was so nice to have both at the same place, and everyone still comments on how lovely it all turned out.

Our wedding was very much a "secret garden" experience. We had both our ceremony and reception in the Rose Garden. It was idyllic. We appreciated how professional and helpful all of the arboretum staff was. Veda, the event coordinator at the arboretum, went out of her way to help us get our wedding together.

We had our wedding at The Rose Garden. It was beautiful. Weather was perfect. Our florist did a wonderful job in decorating the garden. I loved the fact that they shuttled our guests in with golf carts. It was a bit rushed though since we only have a certain amount of time to set up and take pictures. We also had to clean everything ourselves, which was a bit of a hassle. But in the end it was worth it for our perfect wedding. The staff was very professional and helped out as much as they can. Overall, I would recommend this venue because it is very beautiful. A bit pricey, I think, but well worth it in the end. I just wished we had more time to hang out at the garden to take pictures afterwards. We did walk around the entire park to take pictures and it was absolutely beautiful. Totally worth the price just to get some beautiful pictures afterwards!

Beautiful reception and ceremony area! We loved it! Thank you!

Great place to get married if you love outdoors and great views. I would'nt have had it, anywhere else. Also, the peacocks was a hit!!!

My fiance and I were not very pleased with the Arboretum. There are many hidden fees, restrictions, and rules that made planning our wedding and staying within our budget difficult. The cost for use of the location ended up being quite a bit higher ($700 more) than what is originally listed on their website. On top of this we had to get liability insurance for an extra $150. We decided not to have our reception here because of costs such as lighting generator, security, extra staffing, etc. Also, the response time of the wedding coordinator is very slow. Sometimes I would go several days or a week without a response to an important email or phone call. If we would have known beforehand we would have gone elsewhere. Their organization and timing was also a nightmare, and the coordinator would often forget that we scheduled a meeting, and even forgot we had scheduled our rehearsal. They had someone else scheduled at that time and we had to wait for them to finish up. The only positive is the location is beautiful and we could not have found a more visually perfect location for us.

I am writing this review as a 20 year event planning professional. This is a note to other planners specifically and a caution for brides and grooms.

While a lovely facility with low venue fees, this is a horrible location for a wedding for several reasons. The customer service is non-existent (great when they want you to book and then they disappear), you have to use their rental company and her customer service was almost worse than the facility staff, they say they don't have power making you rent $365 generators but they have power and outlets everywhere, they have no facility engineer on site so if a toilet backs up or someone gets sick there is no one to deal with it, there are no marked fire exits, two of the generators caught on fire, the golf cart driver became hostile in front of the bride and continued to disparage the planner to all the guests on the way to the site, there is no path lighting so we had to send guests out the service entrance while the security guards held flashlights, the public is allowed into your wedding areas until 5pm so you can't secure your things, and because they had no one watching the gate where are guests were coming through, the public was sneaking into the park after hours while two weddings were going.

Lastly, planners and coordinators. DON'T DO IT! They warned the couple when they booked that they "don't like planners because they cause trouble." Thank goodness my couple had me. It would have been a disaster.

The people in charge of the place are taking advantage of so many couples and the rental company seems to be gouging. We spent close to $1,000 on generators. Two caught on fire and one we didn't even need.