This review is specifically for The NAT as a wedding venue.

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!