Secret Garden by Wedgewood Weddings — Attraction in Phoenix

Five stars is not enough for the Secret Garden Event Center and our coordinator Stepheny! The Secret Garden Event Center was the perfect place to have our wedding. The vendors they work with are top notch! Aside from how pretty and well maintained the venue is. The real hidden gem is their event coordinators! Our coordinator was Stepheny, and she is phenomenal! From our first email, she was extremely attentive. Any question, concern, or hiccups that came up she had an answer.. The closer we got, the more we reached out to finalize details. Without fail Stepheny always got back to us on the next business day. Even after the wedding, she got back to us on her day off! If I called she always made herself available or called back that day! When we had our tasting she was there with us. We had the good fortunate of meeting her husband, who is a chef with Creative Hands Cuisine, he was our chef for that night. We had several attendees who have dietary restrictions, including myself. Both Stepheny and Stephan know the menu inside and out. They were able to help us plan an amazing menu! We could not have had a more perfect wedding day! To be perfectly honest a good portion of that goes into how organized Stepheny and the vendors contracted with The Secret Garden Event Center are. Stepheny handled every little detail. At the end of the night she even grabbed the heels, I had changed out of and got them in a box so they made it home! I can’t even imagine how stressed if I would have been the day of the wedding, if not for Stepheny and the vendors we had! Thankfully I had no stress and that is in large part due to the fact that I knew Stepheny had it handled. She knew our wedding and all the plans inside and out, and took care of it all! Every detail Stepheny has thought of, and will be able to use her knowledge and expertise to make your event as amazing as ours! Creative Hands Cuisine will take care of any and all dietary needs! On top of that the food will be top notch! You can not find a venue with better food! The contracted cake vendor is Inspired Sugar, and the cake is amazing! We could not have asked for more delicious cake. Our guests told us best wedding cake they'd ever had! They even suggested the bakery we got gluten free cakes from, for our guests. Starz Entertainment has an amazing online portal to take you through the entertainment package process. The djs they have are top notch. Stepheny had all the details handled better than anyone else! The being said the dj we had, Brent has bringing a party to life down to a science! Fred's Florist is one of three florist we had the choice to choose from. We felt Renee with Fred's Florist connected best with us. They really added to the beauty to our event! The bouquets, centerpieces, flower girl crowns, corsages, boutonnières, chuppah, and all other decorations they were involved in were gorgeous! The only vendors we had to find outside of their package list we photography/videography and specialty cake. For photography/videography we went with RMW Photography and Videography. Rebecca and her whole team are incredible. We didn't even know they were there, unless they were giving direct instructions for photos. Specialty cake was made by Jewel's Cafe and Bakery! Guests couldn't even tell it was gluten free, or that the other specialty cake was gluten free, dairy free! Our guests are telling us we had the best wedding ever! It was made possible by The Secret Garden...

If anyone is looking at having their wedding at a Wedgewood property, my husband and I would highly recommend it. 100/10 would recommend the Secret Garden location as the team we worked with was fabulous from start to finish. Beginning with just our tour of the venue, we had Huntyr who was so sweet and so helpful. She showed us the flow of things and helped us to envision ourselves getting married there. We knew the day we did the tour, that was our venue.

From there, they helped us with planning the entire thing... We received a booklet that guided us through all our steps, when to meet with vendors, etc.  Their recommended vendors // the vendors that were included in the Elite package were so excellent to work with!! (Janice at Blooming Bouquets and the team over at Piece of Cake -- wonderful!!).

A few months out from the wedding, we were scheduled to have a big dinner / tasting with other couples getting married at the venue so it was fun chatting with the people around us all planning their weddings for around the same time ours would be happening. We got to see the setting / atmosphere of what the Hors-d'œuvres, cocktail hour, and dinner foods would be like.... It made it very easy for us to select all foods for the day of, as well as meet other vendors (hair/makeup, DJ, videographers, photographers, etc.). Wedgewood made planning the wedding a simplified task.

We had our rehearsal the day before the wedding where our wedding coordinator had everything down (blessed to have Huntyr for our day! was a wish come true). She had everything down - showed everyone what they should be doing and where. I had a checklist prepared of points I wanted to cover and didn't even have to pull it out because our coordinator had hit every bullet I had noted without me even telling her a single bullet I had down.

The day of the wedding was perfect ... the team over at Wedgewood had our suites organized and had champagne prepared for the ladies and beers for the boys in their suite too.  Our coordinator alongside her support team ensured everything was set up for us and that we could just relax and enjoy the day / getting ready / and celebrating in general with our favorite people...... I woke up the morning of and told myself that if anything were to go wrong, that it was out of my control and to let it go..... but I literally cannot even explain how PERFECT our day was. Everything stayed on schedule, decor was set up beautifully, and the Wedgewood staff were there to assist with ANY needs along the way. The food was delicious, the staff for the event was so friendly and eager to help / ensure our day was magical.

Overall, from start to finish, the team there made things easy, fun, and ensured our day was the BEST DAY EVER.  Again - for anyone getting married, I would encourage you to look at Wedgewood properties, although their property, Secret Garden, forever holds that special place in my heart and would be my...

The Secret Garden was home to a beautiful wedding reception full of memories we will cherish forever. Our ceremony was held at a church in Chandler but we wanted a venue location for the reception that would have easy access to the airport and hotels as most of our guests were traveling. Our guests stayed at the Arizona Grand Resort and it worked out very well having a private shuttle run between the two places (the service at the AZ Grand was truly five star and there is a discount code for booking with the Secret Garden- highly recommend). The staff at the Secret Garden, particularly Stepheny was amazing. I work very random hours in the ER (in Michigan, with a three hour time difference) and she promptly replied via phone, text and email on nights and weekends. She worked seamlessly with an outside wedding planner we hired and truly seems to love what she does. The venue itself sells the packages for a reason, they deliver them well. There was some opportunity for improved flexibility on certain things outside of those packages, though in the end they truly delivered. The best example of this was the menu tasting, we recommend contacting them early and requesting the entrees/hors d'oeuvres you are interested in tasting (otherwise it is a general menu they prepare). The venue itself is a beautiful setting. We used the large lawn for our cocktail hour complete with a quartet in the gazebo, the wedding burro, lawn games and two bars. Our dinner under the stars was timed perfectly for a sunset seating, complete with a duet plated service delivered beautifully by Chef Doug with creative hands cuisine (those mashed potatoes though!) and live jazz music. Electricity in the garden area has historically been a bit difficult, but Stepheny worked in coordination with our DJ (Greg, Gold Ring Entertainment) and our Jazz Band to make sure enough power was available. Dinner was truly magical. I remember taking a moment with my husband during dinner and looking out at all of the candlelit tables full of our favorite people and thinking how blessed we are. Inspired sugar delivered a beautiful and equally delicious cake to serve as our third course and then we moved inside for dancing! I don’t think we left the dance floor the rest of the night. At one point, I did briefly step out when the bustle on my dress broke. Stepheny was the first person by my side literally with a needle and thread offering to stitch it back together. The service throughout the entire night was genuine, kind and excellent. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making our day so special.

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