San Diego Natural History Museum Reviews

We had our ceremony on the rooftop of The Nat and it was absolutely beautiful. They also gave us rooms for the bridal party and grooms party to get ready on the day of. They were extremely accommodating and the location and venue are incredible. Most of our guests were from out of town and they absolutely loved it. It's great that it's not directly in the flight path, but you can still see planes go by, and so awesome to get to see the entire park. Such a beautiful venue for a perfect wedding! Highly reccommend.

We could not have had a more spectacular backdrop for our wedding! My husband and I wanted a venue that was "us" and the San Diego Natural History Museum was it. We were able to craft a really special day with the help of all the amazing staff at the Museum. Our day had everything: breathtaking views of Balboa Park, fun time with all of the exhibits and room to dance and eat into the evening. All of our guests continue to rave about what a spectacular wedding it was and we know its because we had it at the San Diego Natural History Museum

We chose the museum because we wanted our money to go to a non-profit. Not only that, but the venue allows you to use the rooftop for the ceremony, the exhibits as the cocktail, and the atrium as the reception. It is an amazing venue, an amazing backdrop, and the staff and crew are all so nice. I think because our wedding was in the summertime in the midst of the insane wedding season from all the reschedules from 2020 & 2021, the communication lines were not fully there. I give them the benefit of the doubt because of the hecticness of everything opening back up, and people being overly excited to throw weddings and events (us being in that group). That being said, The venue itself was magical. All of the guests could not get enough of it, and we can only hope that we made core memories for everyone. I would recommend the museum for a wedding in a heartbeat.

We had our reception on the rooftop of the SDNHM and it was a great space, for up to 100 people, for a seated dinner. Rachel, the events director, was incredibly helpful and responsive, and ensured we had everything we needed. You do have to choose a caterer off their list of allowable choices, but we picked Waters and they were fabulous too. Great location for a wedding reception!

From the moment we stumbled on the San Diego Natural History Museum, we knew we found our perfect wedding venue - the perfect combination of fun, unique, and affordable. There’s just something special about having cocktails amongst dinosaurs, wildflowers, and a megalodon, before having dinner and dancing in front of a full Allosaurus skeleton! And our guests agreed, with so many of them calling it out as one of the most unique wedding venues they’d been to, and how much fun they had!

We had our ceremony on the rooftop, cocktail hour among the exhibits on the 2nd floor, and the reception in the first floor atrium, which gave a nice flow and unique feel to every phase of the evening, each of which stood out in their own way! And they also gave the wedding party access to their boardroom to use as a chilling/staging area before things kicked off (and to stash our things while they were in progress). All the facilities were outstanding and they provided us with all the tables and chairs we needed, plus uplights, and they coordinated seamlessly with all of our vendors. And as a key highlight, they also have their own liquor license, and as such they were able to provide open bar packages at a super reasonable cost!

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced us to postpone our wedding twice, The NAT was great about working with us to find new dates and roll everything over.

The only thing that keeps them from a full 5 stars in our book is that communication was consistently slow and difficult. Emails routinely took over a week (and in some cases multiple weeks) to get a response even with multiple follow-ups, and this created additional stress during the final weeks and months of preparation as we were finalizing details and decorations and the like. But at the end of the day, the event itself went smoothly as can be, and we had the night of our lives in such a beautiful venue!

We have a little bit of a mixed review for the NAT as our wedding venue. I will say, overall we are happy we got married here and our guests loved the unique location. The venue itself is beautiful and lends itself to a spectacular wedding! There is a wonderful ceremony space on the roof, a conference room to wait before, and the atrium as a reception space was lovely. Our only negatives came during the planning process. Day-of, the events team was phenomenal and helped everything really run smoothly, but during the months of planning we, unfortunately, had a pretty difficult time. I was originally so blown away by the quick response time of Jenny and her team when we were looking to tour the museum as a potential venue, but as we got deeper into the planning process, there were times when we couldn’t get ahold of anyone (after many emails and phone calls) to discuss pertinent details. I definitely had a decent amount of stress surrounding the lack of communication, especially with time sensitive details like when I needed to know if I should reach out to my vendors 30 days before or were they going to (and I wasn’t getting a response). We also had a few details fall through the cracks and some miscommunications about things we wanted planned that didn’t end up happening at the wedding which was a little disappointing. All in all, if you use the NAT as your venue, it truly is gorgeous and unique, just make sure to have your own wedding planner or be prepared to really go over everything with a fine toothed comb because communication wasn’t the best, and things slipped though the cracks. I still recommend the NAT as a wedding venue, just be prepared to put in some elbow grease and attention to detail to communicate and get things done.