Gardener Ranch was the first and only venue my husband and I looked at for our wedding. We stepped onto the property and immediately knew this was where we wanted to get married. Not only is the property stunning and can be used in a variety of ways, but the 5 houses on property gave us a three night party we always imagined. The houses are perfect for housing wedding party members, family, and friends. It’s like having 5 small hotels on property!

With COVID, we were forced to postpone. Heather at Gardener held our hand through the whole process. She is so professional, supportive, and responsive. She would call or text anytime we had a question and made us feel so at ease when we were anxious about the state of the world and our wedding.

Our weekend was absolutely perfect, our guests were blown away by the property, and our photos were absolutely perfect.

We had our wedding at Gardener Ranch and it was stunning! We invited 230, and 170 came. I did a lot of research in Carmel Valley for a wedding venue and ended up falling in love with GR. I felt like I had the most flexibility with GR. Other places had a lot of rules and stipulations which really frustrated me: requiring you to use certain vendors or catering, Mission Ranch has a 5 hour maximum event time which I didn’t like (including ceremony to end of the reception). GR really gives you so much control to create your own unique event, you aren’t just another wedding like all the others. You could go as cheap and rustic as you want with a food truck, or as fancy as you want with full catering and they won’t pressure you to do anything a certain way. We chose to stay three nights, such a fun way to bring families together and it was SO worth it to have a full wedding weekend with everyone.

When our friends & family arrived and toured the grounds, they were stunned! It was beautiful. We all loved visiting each other in the houses. It was a great way for our families to get to know each other better. We had our rehearsal dinner on site, very convenient and fun! Very relaxing to have everyone on site or nearby and able to enjoy the whole property!

GR really goes above and beyond to make the experience easy. Heather & Nanci were extremely easy to work with and always thorough with their responses.

I was a very budget conscious bride. We picked off season and had our wedding in March, which saved us a good amount of money. We used GR’s alcohol package to receive a 20% discount and that was great. We did an hour of margaritas (they were strong and very good!) plus wine & beer. We used Jeffrey’s catering, the food was amazing and you can’t beat the price. They weren’t always responsive to us, but when it came to the wedding the food and service was great. Most catering companies gave us quotes over $25k, Jeffrey’s was about $12k and we had a lot of people comment that the food was amazing and the wine was flowing freely! We picked salmon and filet mignon and did a sundae bar which was a hit. We did a small cake with Layers, they are the best in town!

GR was constantly there in the background, cleaning up things and moving things to set them up for us. But I really felt like we had the place to ourselves and could fully enjoy the property. We used Bouqs Co and made our own flower bouquets right there on the venue which was fun and easy.

We were worried about rain for our wedding. We went through options with Chic’s rentals. Option 1) Pay over $20k for a huge tent and dance floor 2) Pay about $5k for a custom tent from Chic’s rental that fits on the patio area- we would have chosen this if rain was 100% for the whole afternoon. 3) Move inside and split up our guests. Fortunately it didn’t rain for our outdoor ceremony, but because of the temperature we chose to move the reception indoors which ended up being just fine. Make sure you think through a rain option and go over options with Nanci & Heather so you’re not stressed before your wedding.

I highly recommend hiring Mark Banks for your DJ. He played live music for us, and everyone loved it! Brandon Scott was also an incredible photographer. Oh and the black and white dance floor! It’s SO awesome in pictures!!!

You are guaranteed to have a unique and lovely wedding at GR. You can choose to do something more budget conscious like I did (I kept ours under $45k) or of course do something extravagant, but it is possible to do it for a more reasonable price!

One piece of advice I wish I had known: lodging for the venue gets tricky very quickly. We chose to charge everyone $60 per night per person staying on the venue. We ended up having about 42 people stay. Anticipate a lot of opinions on where people want to be. If I could do it again I would charge people less if they were staying on a couch. A lot of our family opted to stay across the street at Carmel Valley Lodge (which was convenient and easy!), but anticipate that when you are doing your budget. We had hoped to fill all 51 spots but it just didn’t happen.

I cannot recommend Gardener Ranch enough. We are still getting compliments on what a wonderful venue we picked. Especially our out of state guests—they loved the excuse to come to Carmel Valley!

Faith brought us to Gardener Ranch in our search for wedding venues, and it was truly the best choice we could have ever made! Nancy, Heather, and Gardener Ranch's Staff are the best!! We stayed the whole weekend and had the most amazing time with our family and friends. We used as much of the property as we could and took it all in!! They took amazing care of us and our guests. We had beautiful weather (10.20.18), and everyone left saying 'That was the best wedding they had ever been to' and that 'We did it right!' (probably due to the fact that we never once had to leave this amazing property all weekend!). Thank you so much again!! xoxo Lauren & Miguel