Leu Gardens in Orlando, FL – Wedding Venue Spotlight
Leu Gardens, Orlando, FL | Wedding Venue Review | Best Orlando Wedding Venues
When it comes to dreamy outdoor wedding venues near downtown Orlando, Leu Gardens (also known as Harry P. Leu Gardens) is one of our all-around favorites for best beautiful, unique, picturesque and affordable wedding venues in Central Florida. (Like, it’s really affordable. Keep reading to find out how.)
Leu Gardens is the former home of the Leu family, who built their historic homestead in 1936 and began collecting exotic plants from around the world to create their own tropical paradise right here in Central Orlando, Florida. Now, the house and gardens are open to the public with a small admission fee, boasting nearly 50 acres of botanical oasis.
We’ve visited the Leu Gardens both professionally (it’s one of our favorite wedding venues to shoot at in Orlando!) and personally to visit the grounds with friends—and trust us, you could spend hours wandering the pathways throughout tropical enclaves, floral gardens, and hidden groves. While the Leu Gardens are located just off a busy road near downtown Orlando, as soon as you enter the gardens’ grounds, you immediately forget you’re anywhere but within a secretive botanical oasis.
What it’s like to plan a wedding at Leu Gardens wedding venue in Orlando, FL
Outdoor garden wedding ceremony locations at Leu Gardens in downtown Orlando
From an outdoor wedding amongst the gardens to dreamy bridal portraits along secluded paths, Leu Gardens is one of Orlando’s best-kept wedding venue secrets. (It even includes an indoor weather contingency reservation, so you don’t have to worry about bad weather ruining your wedding day!).
From the Leu Gardens website:
Harry P. Leu Gardens is Orlando’s premier waterfront and garden venue for your wedding or private event. Located in downtown Orlando, Harry P. Leu Gardens provides an authentic, nature inspired backdrop with elegance and historical charm for events of all types. Lush landscapes, white arbors, floral blooms, and the shaded canopies of the Gardens offer an event destination year-round. The Gardens welcomes a full range of events in our outdoor and indoor spaces throughout the gardens and our Welcome Center reception halls. The newly renovated Welcome Center offers contemporary elegance in neutral tones to compliment any event for weddings, receptions, small and large social gatherings, meetings, conferences, business luncheons and dinner events.
Leu Gardens offers up to 7 different locations within the gardens in which to hold your outdoor wedding ceremony: the Rose Garden, Trellis, Landing, or Event Lawn for standard-sized weddings (26–200 guests) and the South Woods Gazebo, South Woods Trellis, and Idea Garden Gazebo for small weddings (up to 25 guests).
Worried about rain? No problem! Leu Gardens includes indoor spaces as a weather contingency, so if storm clouds darken your special day, you and your guests can take cover inside the main house to hold your wedding ceremony on time.
This post showcases Nikhol & Alex’s wedding ceremony at the Landing; bridal portraits at the Rose Garden, throughout the grounds and gardens, and by the main Leu House; with an indoor wedding reception at the Magnolia Room.
Indoor wedding reception at Leu Gardens in downtown Orlando
After you say “I do”, you and your loved ones can take the festivities inside the main Leu House to one of the reception locations available onsite. Choose from the Camellia Room, Rose Room, or Magnolia Room to hold your indoor wedding reception inside the main Leu House. Our couple celebrated their special day in the Magnolia Room, a spacious blank canvas perfect for dining and dancing! Leu Gardens has a list of preferred vendors for catering, so if you’re planning a wedding at this reception venue, you’ll want to work with them on using one of their chosen caterers.
Where to take wedding photos at Leu Gardens
Perhaps a better question than “where to take wedding photos at Leu Gardens” is “where NOT to take wedding photos at Leu Gardens”! With nearly 50 acres of botanical beauty, the possibilities truly are endless.
The gardens are open to visitors until 4pm, so you’ll want to wait until a bit later in the afternoon or early evening if you want to avoid having nosy Nellies in the background of your shot. However, the grounds truly are so expansive that you can still take wonderful, intimate photos even if there are other guests just outside the frame. Some of our favorite bridal portrait locations within Leu Gardens are the Rose Garden, the Idea Garden Gazebo, and of course the lawn by the main house. We recommend couples getting married at Leu Gardens to dedicate a bit of extra time in their wedding day schedule to just wander the grounds, taking wedding photos and bridal portraits at as many of the scenic spots in the gardens as time allows.
What we most love about having a wedding at Leu Gardens in Orlando, FL
Multiple outdoor wedding ceremony spaces
We love that the Leu Gardens offer up to 7 unique spaces to hold an outdoor garden wedding ceremony within the grounds. This means that you can have your pick of a preferred wedding ceremony site from among what’s available for your wedding size on your preferred date. The small cost of admission to view the grounds beforehand is well worth it to tour the grounds, choose your favorite spots to exchange vows—bring your partner along to have it double as a romantic outdoor date!
While there is a chance other weddings may be booked at the Leu Gardens on the same date—or time—as yours, the vastness of the grounds ensures that your ceremony will still feel private and secluded from the rest.
Stunning botanical bridal portraits and wedding photos
It’s tricky to take beautiful botanical, garden-themed wedding photos AND get married in the heart of downtown Orlando, but at Leu Gardens you can have both! Your bridal portraits can be taken just steps away from your wedding ceremony site, and there is no shortage of stunning backdrops and enclaves within the botanical grounds. Most urban wedding venues have either limited grounds or would require a trip by car to another location for wedding photos or first-look photos, but at Leu Gardens you can save time in your busy wedding day by taking photos on site.
All-in-one venue
By planning both your wedding ceremony and wedding reception at Leu Gardens, you take advantage of convenience and saving money on your wedding by booking an all-in-one wedding venue. Often, it’s more expensive to book two separate locations, and your guests have to go through some hassle of driving to a separate location for your wedding reception. We love the convenience and money-saving factor of holding your entire wedding day at Leu Gardens.
BONUS: take your wedding photos with dinosaurs
You heard that right! If you’re a fan of Jurassic Park or just a dinosaur enthusiast, every spring and summer Leu Gardens hosts Dinosaur Invasion, where the grounds are decorated with lifelike dinosaurs throughout the gardens. It’s so vast that the Leu Gardens website recommends 1-2 hours to find all the dinosaurs on-site! If quirky, off-beat wedding photos are your thing, you’ll definitely want to book your wedding at Leu Gardens in time to include these jurassic wedding crashers.
Potential setbacks to having a wedding at Orlando’s Leu Gardens
Grounds are open to visitors
One potential drawback of holding a wedding ceremony at Orlando’s Leu Gardens is that the grounds are open to visitors until 4pm daily. Depending on when you have your wedding ceremony begin (and how quickly the grounds can be cleared of non-wedding guests), you may have some of the garden’s guests either lurking in the background of your wedding photos or wishing you their congratulations with every step you take (at least as an introvert, this would be a drawback for me!). However, if you plan a late afternoon wedding ceremony you can mostly avoid this issue, and as a wedding photographer I was able to guide my couple to more private spots and ensure their photos looked as if they had the place all to themselves.
Parking may be a concern for your guests
Following the point above, if your wedding begins close to the time the grounds are still open to visitors, your guests may struggle to find parking if the lot is full. However, the parking lot is quite expansive so this may also not prove to be a concern.
Required to work with preferred caterers
If you choose to hold your indoor wedding reception at the Leu Gardens main house, you’ll need to choose one of their preferred wedding caterer vendors. However, this is standard practice for many indoor wedding reception venues so it’s only a concern if you had your heart set on catering from your favorite restaurant, and Leu Gardens works with the major wedding caterers in the Orlando area who all provide exemplary service.
How much does it cost to get married at the Leu Gardens in Orlando, FL?
Given how vast, romantic, and unique the historic Leu Gardens is as a wedding venue, it’s very affordable, making it one of our top picks for best wedding venues in Orlando and Central FL. Outdoor wedding ceremonies for small, intimate and micro weddings starts at $375 and ranges up to $1,500 for weddings up to 200 guests.
If you’re planning to hold your indoor wedding reception at Leu Gardens, daytime room rental rates begin at $50/hr with a 2hr minimum, and evening/weekend room rental rates starting at $450 with a 4hr minimum.
Prices taken from www.leugardens.org and reflect the venue’s 2022 pricing.
Final thoughts
Just a single step onto the stunning grounds of Leu Gardens is enough to see why this wedding venue spot is extremely popular with couples in Orlando. Leu Gardens certainly is the top wedding venue in Orlando for anyone dreaming of a botanical garden wedding! We especially love the convenience of hosting an indoor wedding reception on the grounds inside the Leu house, so your guests don’t have to travel to another location for your wedding reception. Our favorite part of getting married at Leu Gardens is, of course, the gardens! As a wedding photographer and videographer, it’s a dream to shoot at a location where there are so many enclaves and secluded pathways for dreamy, botanical garden bridal portraits. We highly recommend any recently engaged couple looking for a botanical garden wedding to put Leu Gardens at the top of their list!
Our rating: 4.5/5
Watch our video of a recent wedding at Leu Gardens in downtown Orlando, FL:
Hi, we’re Author Made, a husband & wife wedding photographer / videographer studio based in Orlando, FL specializing in wedding photography and videography packages for small, intimate, micro weddings and elopements throughout Central Florida. If you’re looking for a wedding photographer or wedding videographer near you who understands and values the unique needs of smaller-scale weddings (we had a small wedding, too), we’d love to have the honor of capturing your wedding day.
If you’re interested in capturing your wedding photography or videography with us, please contact us - we would love to help your special day be all it can be!
