There is no doubt that it is a beautiful place to get married but $750 for 2 hours in a designated spot in the garden and nothing else included is a little steep.

Not to mention, on my wedding day, I showed up for my 3-5pm slot and another bride was just starting her wedding (an hour late!) she did not leave until 3:40 and my wedding was at 4:00pm. The staff at Duke Gardens did NOTHING in response to this except passive aggressively cursing and complaining to my maid of honor about it. Oh, and one staff member laughed when someone signed MY guestbook, as I was trying to set up my wedding around her guests.

This was NOT the experience I was hoping for and my wedding day memory will always be marred by this experience.

We had an INCREDIBLE time at our wedding reception at the Doris Duke Center in the Duke Gardens. This venue is beautiful and it's great because your guests aren't confined to one room the whole time because there is an outdoor terrace and the gardens right there. The only drawback I can think of is that there are no refridgerators, you have to rent all your tables and chairs from an outside vendor, and the latest we could stay was 11. These were minor incoveniences though, overall it was wonderful.

Very nice venue for our wedding day. The staff was friendly and helpful. Thank you for everthing!

This was only my CEREMONY location. My husband an I love to take walks and really enjoy nature. This place is iconic and maybe a little over done. We really were lucky to just walk in and ask if they had our date available and they actually had 2 openings that day. We jumped on it. The gardens are incredible and really worth the money. We were already having a small wedding and since the area can only accomadate so many people it worked out well. Obviously the only drawback is the weather but that is the risk you take when you go outdoors. I was married at the pergola and it was incredible. Wonderful place for pictures and a great place for gathering with others. It's a place I can go to over and over again and have beautiful memories. Oh and you don't have to pay a cent to decorate it because it's so incredibly beautiful!!!!

We did our wedding ceremony and reception at the Amphitheater and the Doris Duke Center. The setting was absolutely beautiful. The pictures turned out perfect and I wouldn't have any other location for our wedding. Please note that when you are planning to look into the lottery system that they use to award your date for this location before booking any other vendors. Also, if you are doing the reception at Duke Gardens, please note that you can only use certain vendors approved by Duke. Please also note that you will pay the 2500 fee to use the location, and then they charge a 7% vendor fee to use the venue that gets passed onto you. We did not realize this until we paid the 2500 to book the location and started booking vendors. We felt though that this venue was worth every penny. :) Ashley and Jenn were great and gave us some good ideas.

The Duke Gardens are AMAZING! I absolutely loved having our wedding there! It was so beautiful and had everything we needed! We used the amphitheater for our ceremony and the hall for our reception. Jen the coordinator was so helpful and super nice throughout the entire process - from asking questions, booking to final rain back up plans! Also the cost was a great deal! We booked all vendors - caterer, DJ, bar, cake, rentals ourselves. I would definitely recommend it!

This was a beautiful ceremony setting, and I was pleasantly surprised by both the affordability and by the availability of dates/times. The staff were wonderful to work with both before and during the wedding. The "celebrity effect" of having wedding onlookers is pretty fun, too. :)

My wedding at Duke was absolutely gorgeous. The staff was friendly, helpful and available.

Ashley Carmichael at Duke Gardens is super-easy to work with - we loved this location!

Ashley Carmicheal with the SPD Gardens was wonderful! She was very patient with us trying to decide upon a date. My only problem with the site was the the water pump in the lily channel next to our wedding site apparently broke the day before our wedding and no one bother to tell us. In fact we were the ones to tell Ashley. Ashley, however, really stepped up once she heard how upset I was and made quite a few calls for us in order to be sure that the channel at least held water for our ceremony and was not an unsightly mud hole!

Beautiful venue and very inexpensive. Ashley was easy to work with.

We had a wonderful experience booking our ceremony at the Pergola (gazebo) at Duke Gardens. The lady in charge of reservations was extremely helpful and was responsive to exchanged emails and phone calls to make sure everything was ready for the big day. They took care of setting up chairs and making sure we had parking passes for all of our guests. The booking process was a snap and only required a simple contract that were were able to mail back. Duke Gardens was also very flexible with us on setting a rehearsal time the day before and even extended the time on our parking passes so that we could stay longer and take photos of the wedding party in the gardens. We received our security deposit back right on time with no hassles.

The biggest perk to booking our wedding at Duke Gardens was the natural beauty and scenery. We were able to save a ton of money by not having to buy additional decorative flowers!

Ashley and the rest of the Duke Gardens Staff did a fantastic job helping me and my parents feel comfortable and relaxed about having a wedding and a reception at the gardens. The site is so beautiful and there are many different locations to have a ceremony depending on your guest list. The Doris Duke Center offers a perfect place to have your reception. Ashley did an awesome job keeping us informed on what was allowed and how vendors work in the space. My wedding day was perfect and the gardens were what made the moment so much more memorable.

BEAUTIFUL AND WONDERFUL PLACE TO GET MARRIED!!! All our guests loved it.

The Gardens were a perfect setting for our wedding. Our contact was very helpful, always cheerful, and never stressed you out during the planning. We didn't have a tent so we were lucky it didn't rain. The only difficulty with any outdoor wedding is finding a back-up location. Unless the reception is at the Gardens as well, you can't book their facility as a back-up. There were plenty of options available to us though so it wasn't too much of a problem. The Gardens definitely made our wedding (and the entire planning process) much more memorable than if it had been in a church or hotel (for us anyway).

The Duke gardens are a beautiful place to get married and have a ceremony. We got married at the Pergola and had our reception at the Doris Duke Center on a Sunday afternoon. The only downfall is that the restroom are poorly maintained. We called in March to book for the end of September, but many dates will take planning of up to a year.

Also, the site was a decent price, but many outdoor vendors probably would be less expensive and would give more services. For instance, I thought there would be someone coordinating the wedding (ie. the rehearshal), but we had to manage that on our own.