Woodland Park Zoo Reviews

Woodland Park Zoo

Seattle, WA

4.3 out of 5 rating, 18 reviews

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4.3 out of 5 rating

4.3

Good

18 reviews

Recommended by 86% of couples

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Quality of service
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Professionalism
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Nicole Sent on 08/18/2022

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Fantastic experience for wedding ceremony

We got married at the Woodland Park Rose Garden back in June and the team went above and beyond to make our wedding day perfect. Unfortunately, we had pouring rain which comes with its own set of complications, but the events team was amazing, they helped us navigate the weather and make sure guests were comfortable. The bar we set up in advance of the ceremony was such a nice touch that our guests loved and the staff we're fantastic. Pre wedding the team was super responsive to all emails and were very helpful on the venue walk thru. Can't recommend this place and team enough.
Pamela Sent on 08/02/2022

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Simple and Easy

We had a beautiful wedding, followed up by a meet and greet with a lovely porcupine. It made our day extra special. We had a great experience. Great customer service. I would highly recommend this vendor team.
Stephanie Sent on 07/04/2022

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It was a wildly good time

We had a great experience with Woodland Park Zoo and Levy Catering. We rented the Northwest Trail with our ceremony on the Elk Overlook and reception in the former Taiga Shelter (with the otters and bear). Planning was easy, the food was terrific, and we got lucky - the elk, bear, otters and mountain goats all made appearances!

Molly Sent on 06/11/2018

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I am beyond pleased with how my wedding turned out at Woodland Park Zoo. They did a phenomenal job at hosting the event, planning the various details including from the initial planning meeting to the final event. The signs helped direct guests during the event. Everyone was very easy to work with and yet very detailed oriented. Our wedding happened to be on prom night and a bus load of people were trying to take photos at the Rose Garden during the ceremony, in which the Zoo did not let this issue interrupt our ceremony. My guests all enjoyed themselves and I received multiple comments my wedding was one of the best weddings they have been to and I truly have to thank Woodland Park Zoo. I highly recommend having your event at Woodland Park Zoo, including for a wedding as you will not be disappointed. Their exclusive caterer also did an amazing job. I cannot say enough positive things about Woodland Park Zoo.
Stefanie Sent on 10/08/2008

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I have nothing but good things to say about Woodland Park Zoo. My sales manager, Erin Schmidlii, is absolutely wonderful. I think she is leaving very shortly, which is sad, but the entire staff is great also. They do not try and make you purchase unnecessary things. They works with you to make it exactly how you want it. I had a budget to stick to, and yes it is a little pricey, but she helped me stay within my budget and actually brought the price of food DOWN so that we actually saved more money that we thought we would! The food is incredible and it is very "green," such as grass fed beef and seafood off the seafood watch card. So yes it may be a little pricey, but it is worth it. And before weddings, they have a night where their caterer (who is also fabulous), makes all of their food and you get to sample all of it. They also set up tables with different decorations and layouts so you can see what your reception setup will look like. I HIGHLY recommend having your reception here (I had mine in the Rain Forest Food Pavillion). And even your ceremony or both would be great to have here!
Skye Sent on 05/07/2008

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We decided to have our wedding in the Taiga exhibit. The zoo's staff were very friendly and helpful - they had people other than the catering staff there on the wedding day, helping make sure everything went smoothly. Before the wedding, they stayed in contact to make sure everything was set. A rehearsal hour the week Thursday before the wedding was included without paying extra, and they had people there then, too, to answer questions and help us finalize details. It was an excellent experience. The site was only $800, and the catering was about $3000 (which overall, for comparable food and service was very, very low cost.)
Michelle Sent on 09/16/2014

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I was married at the zoo last month, and I have to say it was a great experience.

The ceremony was in the Northern Trail section - the elk were out for the vows, and the bear/otters making an appearance in the Taiga shelter for the reception. I got many many many comments about what a unique/cool/beautiful venue I had chose all throughout the night and next few days. There was more of a forest than a zoo feel to that particular area. It was a bit lucky on my part, as we had originally booked the rainforest café and rose garden, but changed our minds when we decided to cut the size of our wedding in half.

To that end-the zoo was very flexible in working with us so we could transfer over to the new space, which was much appreciated. They also managed a last minute change to the décor with no issues, and were able to provide some additional hanging lanterns. Lastly, I was originally quoted a bit different price when I first signed the contract, and when I received the final invoice and saw it was different as they'd raised their prices, I was given the prior price promised at the outset.

Everyone I worked with was very responsive and flexible. The space was prepared with plenty of time for the wedding, despite the short turnaround between closing and guests arriving, and everything was able to proceed in as timely a manner as can be expected for an event with alcohol.

Lastly I did appreciate that as someone who lives around here, the very reasonable rental cost goes to a non-profit in the neighborhood.
Isabella Sent on 07/14/2024

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The Woodland Park Zoo was such a joy to work with!

Bramble and Wood and the entire team at Woodland Park Zoo were such a joy to work with! After our former venue closed suddenly four months before our date, we selected the Woodland Park Rose Garden to hold our wedding and can't believe that wasn't the plan from the start! They were so patient and thoughtful as we had many questions planning sight-unseen from across the country, and our wedding at the Rose Garden turned out even more beautiful than we'd imagined. All of our guests raved about the garden's beauty, and we especially love that it's a public park that we can go back and visit again and again to reminisce on our wedding day!
- +5 photos
User903544 Sent on 08/19/2012

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my husband and i got married late aug 2011. We chose the woodland park zoo for our reception site since it was a non-profit organization, and we liked that the cost of the reception venue would be funneled back into the community we lived in. plus, it was a no-brainer when we found out we were able to rent out the carousel too!!! We had our sit down dinner reception in the rainforest pavillion (food court), but we rented out the carousel for cocktails and throughout the evening. the carousel has a kids room which was big enough to serve as the "kids area" after dinner. the food court has pull-out curtains that disguise the "food court" look. the only issue, like most of seattle, is the lack of air conditioning on a super hot summer day (our day was fine, and the weather cooled off by dinnertime). overall, i think the zoo is great because there are so many different areas to hold an indoor or outdoor reception. we rented pedicabs also to help all of our guests in stilettos..
User862835 Sent on 07/13/2012

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We had our July 2011 ceremony in the Rose Garden and our reception at the Rainforest Pavilion. We were incredibly pleased with the helpful, friendly, competent staff from the Zoo and associated catering company (Lancer). The garden was such a perfect setting for our ceremony and we hardly needed any additional flowers because we were surrounded by rose blooms and evergreens. The garden technically remains open to the public but the few people who wandered around beforehand were very respectful and staff kindly requested for people to come back or keep their distance during the ceremony. The Rainforest Pavilion may not look like much during the day, but the staff do a wonderful job of transforming it by night. We loved the open feel of the pavilion (lots of windows) and the size was perfect (we had about 115 guests). The food was really good (did not have the vaguely bland buffet taste wedding food sometimes does) and the bartenders generous. This is not a cheap venue, but it is very affordable compared to most other venues especially given the quality of food, drink, and service. They even let us bring in our own wine (a sentimental family favorite) for a flat corkage fee.

Overall - we were perfectly happy with our choice.
Samantha Sent on 06/09/2017

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We got married at the zoo this last weekend and all I can say is WOW!! They staff with both the venue and the catering were top notch and beyond helpful. We originally were going to shoot our photos before the ceremony at the Rose Garden, but decided that we would like to do it in the zoo and they were more than happy to accommodate and let us in early to do so, and work with us to ensure that I was hidden away from the guys as we had opted to skip a first look. Our ceremony and reception were both held at the Rain forest Pavilion and the space was GORGEOUS!!! We opted for the extra lights and lanterns and it just made the room even more magical. Our cocktail hour was held at the Carousel and this was probably the most talked about part of the night, all of our guests were just blown away by this and still talking about how much fun they had, I cannot wait to get our photos back from this part to relive it all over again. All in all we had a blast and I would 5/5 recommend the zoo as a fun and memorable wedding venue!
Grace Sent on 09/06/2015

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Many of my friends were surprised when they were invited to our wedding at the Zoo. "The Zoo? Hm, I didn't know they did weddings. That's cool though." As more details were revealed, everyone started getting very excited -- "Wait, there's gonna be an owl? And an armadillo?? WHAT!" Needless to say, having our wedding at the Woodland Park Zoo was a unique and very memorable experience. Our ceremony took place at the Beech Grove, and our reception was in the Rainforest Pavillion. Joanna Moore, the event coordinator, was very professional and made sure every detail met or exceeded our expectations. My favorite moment of the planning process was when Joanna and I sat down with the head caterer and my wedding planner, and we finalized all of the wedding details. Joanna and Kory were SO on top of everything, and I was extremely impressed. As for my favorite moment of the wedding day, well, there are just way too many happy memories to recount here, but just know that if you get married at the Zoo, you will have an incredible experience :)
User912055 Sent on 08/26/2012

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This was the most amazing place to have our wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony in the Rose Garden followed by our reception in the Rain Forest Pavilion. We had a wonderful day and were able to take amazing photos feeding the elephants and riding the carousal. They are a bit strict on things just because it is a zoo so that was understandable but that is really that my only slight complaint. I would definitely recommend!
Kristina Sent on 04/09/2010

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The service was good, although our meat was under cooked (I got them to reimburse us for that). The venue is great for large groups, we rented the kids room across the way too and that worked out great. The space is a bit rough so you have to budget extra money for rentals to really make it look like a wedding. There is no air conditioning so it gets hot in there, especially in the summer!
Kate Sent on 11/11/2008

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I used the Beech Grove as my ceremony site. Although the end product was beautiful and done professionally, there were a few bumps along the road. The contact person had changed hands once while I had the Beech Grove booked. They were extremely set on needing a decision 3 days prior on whether to have a tent up for the ceremony. Plus, once that decision was made, it was fixed, regardless of weather on the day of my ceremony. However, on the day, they called me and told me that if I didn't want the tent (since the day was going to be beautiful), they would take it down free of charge. The time of the ceremony was also a bit tricky, since it needed to be after the park had closed. However, they were professional, and the site was beautiful.
Lisa Sent on 09/01/2017

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I sincerely hope that our experience was atypical. I truly feel that having a wedding planner made this wedding happen. We had actually booked the venue a year in advance and after only a month of emailing the zoo coordinators (which at one point, had to be about half a dozen different people!), we finally realized that we needed our own wedding planner. Our wedding planner was surprised by how high the turn-over was among the people we were in touch with on the zoo's end. Although she had over 10 years of professional experience working as a planner (based in Seattle), she also found it difficult to communicate with the zoo. We were extremely unimpressed by the zoo's professionalism and lack of organization. Even though we had booked the zoo 1 year in advance, as well as the rehearsal date (which had been cleared by one of the zoo staff members as available), they made us change the rehearsal date with less than a month's notice because of an event. We understand that its the zoo, and there are events, but we were shocked that they didn't inform us of it sooner (once again, we had booked the wedding and rehearsal date a year in advance). Half of our entire wedding party and guests were traveling from the east coast, so any changes in scheduling was pretty much impossible on their end (in fact, one of the traveling groomsmen was unable to attend the rehearsal because of the scheduling change). Besides, the overall difficulties in communication, the zoo coordinator's professionalism was also extremely lacking. There were some major decisions that they dictated that lead to a delay in some aspects of the wedding, eg- the escort cards. Our wedding planner had suggested that we have the escort cards available for pickup during the cocktail hour, but the zoo outright refused to accommodate this, which lead to a long delay and line of our wedding guests standing out in the cold to enter the Rainforest Pavilion for the reception. I highly recommend having a wedding planner
Liz Sent on 09/19/2025

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death by 1000 paper cuts

Communication was poor, often requiring that we correct them multiple times, follow up on unanswered emails multiple times (including the two weeks before the wedding!) and had to repeat ourselves many times. Nothing horrible went wrong on our wedding day, it was just not a very well run event. They didn’t follow the floorplan in two locations, the ceremony and cocktail hour. Our coordinator was able to correct the ceremony thankfully but the cocktail hour was so poorly laid out that guests commented on it to us. We paid the Zoo for AV and the ceremony was set up last, 30 min before the ceremony, for some reason, meaning our audio check for ceremony music and microphones was after guests had come in.
I don’t want to detail out every thing that was annoying about working with the zoo, but suffice to say, if you are used to working with people who have to be responsive and get the details right the first time, you will be frustrated with the Zoo. The Rose Garden was gorgeous! Our advice would be to have your ceremony there and plan a reception elsewhere. Catering was very challenging to work with and the quality did not meet price compared to other venues we toured.
Leah Sent on 09/13/2013

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I had my wedding at the zoo and had a horrible experience both with the zoo and their in-house caterer (please see my separate review for Lancer Catering). I have limited space here, so please contact me and I will provide further details.

I had issues during the planning process, with receiving different, contradictory information from various zoo sales managers, and not all costs were initially disclosed to me. Having to deal with separate reps from the zoo and Lancer on overlapping issues was also very annoying.

The day of the wedding, my ceremony started nearly an hour later than it should have, because the zoo was not ready. According to my coordinator, the zoo was filthy and the staff was not attentive to setting up our wedding.

At the end of the night, some of my guests were locked in the parking lot and had to track down a guard to let them out (who was not very nice). There were also issues with lack of lighting and lack of signs directing people to the parking lot.

The day after the wedding, I was charged an additional $150 by my equipment rental company because the chairs were not stacked by the zoo as they were supposed to be. However, to the zoo's credit, they did take responsibility and reimbursed me. I will say that I was very impressed with the professionalism of Toni (supervisor) when I raised these concerns (and more) after the wedding. But unfortunately, what's done is done.

In sum, I obviously do not recommend having an event at the zoo. It's simply not worth the stress. If you want a venue with an animal connection, check out the aquarium instead. And please check out my review of Lancer if for some reason you're still not persuaded.

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