University of Illinois Arboretum — Attraction in Urbana

Wedding review

University of Illinois Arboretum is a cute little Arboretum for central Illinois. It is a beautiful place to hang out during the day or go for a walk.

Trying to plan and host a wedding there on the other hand was a real headache.

Diane from the Arboretum was hard to get a hold of when we did have questions, and then when we finally reached her she usually seemed like she was put off by our questions. She was also several minutes late to our meeting over A year ago to walk the grounds and discuss an event location. We discussed and finalized a location for our wedding event and that was all that we needed to talk to her about until nearly a year later.

Almost a year went by and it was time for our last payment to be made to the UofI for holding the event. It was VERY hard to get a hold of anyone from their department to submit our liability insurance and payment for the event. I then found out several people from their department weren’t working there anymore and they had not found replacements. It seemed Diane was a one woman show for all business, correspondence, and horticulture.

I stopped at our wedding venue a couple weeks away from our wedding only to find that the sycamore trees, in the area we were to be married, were all sick. Some with very sparse and wilted leaves or no leaves at all. Despite all the trees around them having leaves. I did some research and it turns out that all trees in the Midwest were having the same problem due to the cold wet spring we had this year. That was not the Arboretum’s nor Diane’s fault. And to top it off, there were HEALTHY trees nearby (so close they would have been in the background of our pictures) that they cut down to “plant marigolds” less than a month out from our wedding. Yet all the way up until the week before it was a pile of sticks, tree stumps, and sawdust. Another thing I fault them for is the fact that we were not notified of these problems or offered to move our event location.

So we took matters into our own hands and decided on another event location. Diane approved the request, defensively, stating that the trees were like that everywhere and that they were planning to plant marigolds.

Moving on.

We check on the new event location a week out and the grass looked like it hadn’t been mowed in weeks, there were seed pods with spikes everywhere where people would be sitting, mulch hadn’t been changed yet all spring, and weeds 3 feet high in several areas. We were very disappointed with the lack of upkeep of this Arboretum- which is a glorified garden. I don’t know any true gardener that wouldn’t be mortified with the sight of the weeds this place had.

When we asked about the weeds and the grass, Diane promised to have the grass mowed and the weeds pulled. Which they were within a couple days of the wedding.. but with grass and weed piles lying around the lawn of the area we were getting married in.

In the last couple weeks of planning Diane did start to soften up a bit and was being helpful and nice, but still seemed busy and very distracted.

The reason I’m only giving the Arboretum 2/5 stars is because to anyone not looking too close this is a beautiful park. But to anyone wanting to host a wedding event here I strongly recommend you be warned. We received really poor communication, had to jump through hoops to find out who to pay or where to send our last check and submit liability insurance (was never sent a final invoice or anything like that), we were met with contempt for most things we asked for help with, and I found them to be very untrustworthy. I mean- who changes the aesthetic of a wedding site three weeks...

Arborettum is an amazing green expanse where you can take lungfulls of fresh pure oxygen. With huge trees and green manicured lawns, it is a good place to break the monotony of the day. You can choose to stretch your legs and take a walk, lie down on the grass and look up at the blue sky, sit under a tree, gaze at turtles in the pond, explore Japan house and enjoy a tea ceremony. Japan house was closed for summer so we missed that part. A quiet green place to be enjoyed. The place is vast so please make sure not to get lost. It is just green all around as far as the eyes can see. We went in the afternoon, so not sure if the place is lit at night. Make sure to wear good shoes to walk around and explore...

Went here on Saturday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend. The gardens around the Japan House were very nice. (The Japan House itself was closed.) The Idea Garden struck us as kind of slapdash. A lot of plants crammed into a fairly small space. Looking at the tags for many of the plants, we could have just visited the garden center of our local Lowe's or Home Depot. Walked over to the Miles C Hartley Selection Garden, and the selection was somewhat, ah, lacking. A whole lot of empty ground, at a time when you wouldn't expect that to be the case. We've been to a fair number of arboreta and gardens around the country. This one was, unfortunately, far removed from the...