Descanso Gardens Reviews

We had an amazing wedding at Descanso Gardens. It was a dream come true! Our ceremony was in the Oak Forest (nice and cool on the hot August day and beautiful to match) and our reception was in the Rose Pavilion(gorgeous craftsman style and large enough for all our guests). The food was amazing and all of our guests talked about how great the food was for weeks after the event. The staff was very accommodating and helped with some special requests for different colored napkins and custom cocktails. I was happy to be nicknamed The Rainbow Bride :) Our day of coordinator was LAUREN GODSIL. I highly highly recommend her. She was amazing. Thanks again to the staff at Descanso and Patina Group for making our wedding so special!

My name is Eric and I own an entertainment company by the name of Extreme DJ Service. Discerns Gardens is a preferred venue that we have had the privilege of working at for many years. If you are looking for a beautiful unique space with a great view, great food along with professional service… look no further, the DG is the place. We highly recommend the venue and their staff.

Eric Morales
Extreme DJ Service

Descanso Gardens is where my daughter's wedding venue was held, on a beautiful warm August night. We had a delightful time, with having the wedding in the Oak Forest, the reception around the Spanish Fountain and the dinner/dancing under the Rose Pavilion, making for a spectacular and memorable evening. I would highly recommend having a wedding at Descanso Gardens and the wedding coordinators were great to work with.

My husband and I got married at the Oak Grove (ceremony) and the Rose Pavilion (reception) at Descanso Gardens last month. It was a beautiful day, and the venue was gorgeous with the flowers in full bloom. I also cannot say enough great things about the site coordinator, Megan Van Deusen. It was a real pleasure to work with her - she was so nice, professional, and accommodating. The service and food from Patina Catering was also excellent.

We're so glad we chose Descanso for our wedding! The staff was responsive, helpful, and obviously very experienced at what they do. Our guests were impressed by the venue space, but also impressed by the service, set-up, and amenities. The staff worked very well with my wedding planner and ensured that everything was in place. The gardens were absolutely stunning in our photos. The Japanese Gardens and Oak Forest were particularly photogenic.

After looking at several venues, my fiance and I chose Descanso Gardens for many reasons, but largely due to the beautiful oak forest and large willow tree next to the Rose Pavilion. We worked with Megan, Susan, and Brooke and they were all AMAZING! The ceremony and reception turned out better than I could have imagined. Beautiful rustic garden venue that all of our guests loved and our pictures look fantastic!

My guest raved about how beautiful the gardens are and how delicious the food was. We loved every second of our wedding here. Just visit the grounds and your will see why we fell in love. The special events staff are very friendly and are willing to work with anything they can possibly do. If you are considering this venue, DO IT!!!

Beautiful grounds. Only negative is that you can only use their caterer, Patina. They are great but expensive.

The venue is stunning -- we chose to have our ceremony in the oak forest and our reception in the pavilion. Our coordinator was professional and very helpful. She always got right back to us with any questions we had. Overall, a wonderful experience!

Descanso Gardens is a beautiful wedding venue and we were very happy with our event here! It is a little bit pricey but they definitely take care of you and make sure your day runs smoothly. You have to use their caterer, Patina, but the food is really very good and they have a large selection.

We originally planned to marry at the Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, but after considering the cost and drive we started to look more locally.

After much consideration we decided to hold the reception in our backyard for a more intimate and casual atmosphere, where we could decorate however we wanted and not have to work within the time constraints of other venues. We still wanted to find somewhere beautiful and inspiring for our ceremony and when we happened upon the oak forest at Descanso Gardens we knew we had found the perfect place. It is reasonably priced, considering we were only there for our ceremony and photos and the staff was consistently responsive and accommodating. Our wedding ceremony was absolutely gorgeous and though we had to go on a crazy golf cart drive to avoid being seen (some gate was locked) it made for a fun adventure and I was able to see people filing in and sneak a peek at my husband to be.

All in all, I would absolutely recommend this venue for your ceremony.They require you to work with a specific catering company for any food - they are quite pricey and originally turned me off to the place completely - but if you discuss any hesitations with your contact at the Gardens they will work to make sure that the catering will fit into your budget (or so I've been told)

They did a great job although for the price I just wish the grass was green

We got married in the rose garden in June and it was absolutely lovely! There was very, very little flexibility however. To some degree they are used to hosting a stock sort of wedding and if you want to go outside that box expect to meet resistance. I wanted to arrange my chairs in a different manner then the normal one and was not worked with on this at all, etc. That said, response times from them on questions were great, their coordinator was wonderful, and it was all around a great experience. Just be prepared to hear a lot of "no"'s if you have some outside the box ideas!

We chose the rose gardens for our ceremony only which held the number of guests we had (150) and it was a beautiful area. The guests had plenty of room and the grounds were just gorgeous. We only decorated the sides of the chairs because the natural look was already so amazing. The wedding coordinator they give you for the day was very helpful but because Descanso is in a neighborhood they are very strict about a few things and you have to follow their protocol closely. I understood because they need to keep it nice and the way it is. That's the only reason I gave average for flexibility...it's hard for them to really be really flexible. But the rest of the experience was really great.

Very nice place for a wedding but note the following and ask the following questions when shopping for venues.
1. Do they allow outside catering service. This place uses Patina and they are expensive. They charge a misc fee of 22PERCENT!!!! So you pay an extra 4-5K. Other places DO NOT have this fee and what they call "administration fee." You already pay for labor so I do not understand what this fee is for?
2. They are strict with vendors.
3. You need to hire their day of coordinator. approximately $500
4. Not too responsive with calls
5. Overall, they are a bit too strict but it is a nice park. You can always go to the Arboretum like we did or Santa Barbara.
So when shopping ask for all misc fees associated with the venue or vendor.

I loved the area because it was a garden but the staff at Descanso was not very accomodating. They sprung the news on me that we had an in-house coordinator who charges $450 the week before the wedding. I didn't even meet with her to discuss details (of which I had many), and finally met her at the rehearsal. It's just no fun to entrust your wedding day to someone who hasn't been there for any of the planning or met with your to know your visions of the event. I wasn't happy with the service and thought she was less than helpful when it came to problem solving. Descanso has the most amazing caterer, but all other recommended services, including their rental company are not up to standard. We didn't end up using their rentals.

We had a BEAUTIFUL wedding at Descanso last September. There isn't a lot of flexibility in terms of vendor selection; they have a fairly short list of preferred vendors, and you have to use their catering through Patina, which, fortunately, is delicious (although very pricey). Joan, the Special Events Coordinator (and her colleagues) aren't very responsive and can be a bit short, so it might be difficult to swing a wedding here w/o a coordinator. The BIGGEST mistake we made was hiring one of their recommended coordinators, who happen to work for Descanso as day-of coordinators (who you are obligated to hire/pay if you select this venue...you can hire them independently to provide longer-term wedding coordination service and they'll absorb the day-of fee). Deanna, coordinator we hired, was terrible. We spent $4,200 on the partial planning package, which, according to the agreement, included services such as "Coordinating all vendor’s services – reviewing all contracts, ensuring that all vendors meet the requirements of the venue, managing coordination between vendors as needed, provide bride and groom with advice, ideas and vendor referrals along the way as needed " To say she failed to deliver on this front would be an understatement; she was unresponsive and so slow to reach out to vendors that I ended up doing everything myself. We nearly missed out on a pie vendor we wanted (which was a big priority for us-luckily I got to them in time to book even though they'd already filled up their full September schedule), and we didn't even have ceremony musicians booked until 3 WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING! This was after MONTHS of us pleading with her to recommend/contact musicians. She didn't provide a payment schedule (which was the one thing we'd requested and ensured would be included ion her services prior to signing an agreement with her), and she was just totally out-of-the-loop in terms of what was going on with our vendors (we were unable to do a final in-person consultation w/our florist before the wedding, where we'd have been able to actually SEE samples of the centerpieces, etc, because Deanna didn';t have it on her radar at all whatsoever. I had to do it by phone at the last minute, and of course, Deanna wasn't even available to participate. I was 100% on my own w/the vendor management).

We also expressed concern over the bar getting too crowded, w/a long wait time during cocktail hour. We ended up ordering 90 glasses of champagne and wine to be passed on trays to our guests immediately upon entering the rose garden/fountain area after the ceremony. We asked for this additional service anticipating that 120 guests with 2 bartenders would immediately create a long line at the garden reception.
Our worst fears were realized when a huge line formed at the bar and no servers were immediately serving wine and champagne to our guests when they entered the fountain area. There was NO WINE, NO CHAMPAGNE, NO PASSED TRAYS. My mom went looking for Deanna, and found her chit-chatting with Leticia, the head of catering, and asked why the champagne we'd PAID FOR was not being served. Deanna and Leticia both gave her attitude and said "the servers are busy w/the food service-what do you expect?!" She had to argue with them and say, obviously, we expected passed trays of champagne, as we'd PAID AND ARRANGED FOR. Shortly after this confrontation, a few servers with trays of maybe 10 drinks began circulating among the crowd. Why was this even offered as an option in the catering package if it wasn't feasible?

Leticia (head of catering) was also severely un-responsive throughout the planning process; we'd hoped to upgrade the wine (and spend more $$!), and she'd promised to set up a tasting so we could decide on our selection, but our multiple attempts to reach her via phone and email to schedule it went unasnwered. Then, to add insult to injury, after we'd contacted her numerous times in February about both setting up a tasting and inquiring about an updated quote once we'd finalized menu selection, the payment schedule, etc, never to recieve a response. Out of NOWHERE, on JUNE 21, we received an email from Leticia saying we needed to pay $15,000 "ASAP." Again, this without ever providing an updated quote or payment schedule as requested several times. We even recieved a "request for final payment" a week after our wedding, in spite of the fact that we had already paid in full-with both Leticia and Deanna copied on payment and receipts! And again, this occurred in spite of the fact that we'd hired the COORDINATOR WHO WORKS FOR DESCANSO, AND KNOWS/WORKS DIRECTLY WITH LETICIA ON A ROUTINE BASIS! How does stuff like this fall through the cracks?

There is SO MUCH MORE that I could share about the countless ways in which Deanna fell short (and trust me, that's sugarcoating it), but this would be 10 pages long...at the end of the day, our wedding was more beautiful than I ever could have imagined, and it is definitely possible to have a MUCH better experience here than we did, as long as you go in w/your eyes wide open, have the right coordinator (NOT one hired through Descsanso...at least, NOT DEANNA), and really stay on top of Leticia/Patina w/the details (although I suppose that wouldn't be an issue w/a decent coordinator)!