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About

On WeddingWire since 2018

Last update: March 2025

Welcome to Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG), where nature meets celebration. As the largest botanical garden in Canada, RBG offers a breathtaking backdrop for your special day. Nestled between Burlington and Hamilton, just 45 minutes from Toronto, our venue spans 2,400 acres of pristine gardens and nature sanctuaries. Whether you envision an intimate gathering or a grand affair, RBG provides a variety of venues, horticultural enrichment options, and diverse photography locations to fulfill your wedding dreams. Our dedicated staff is committed to crafting an unforgettable experience tailored to your vision, ensuring that your wedding at RBG is truly extraordinary.

Facilities and Capacity

Inspired and surrounded by nature, RBG has various ceremony spaces for weddings. Whether your vision is an intimate affair of 20 people or a larger celebration with 250+, our gardens provide the perfect setting. Ceremonies at RBG are only offered alongside reception bookings. Ceremony-only bookings are not available at this time.
RBG offers multiple wedding reception options, accommodating up to 250 guests with beautiful spaces. This is your moment, and it is our goal to make it a location that you and your guests will remember for the rest of your lives.

RBG Main Centre: 680 Plains Road West, Burlington
The year-round focal point of RBG – featuring indoor and outdoor displays, including the Mediterranean Garden. The Auditorium, outdoor tents, Atrium and Escarpment Garden combine over over 17,000 square feet for personalized weddings at RBG Centre.

RBG Rock Garden: 1185 York Blvd, Hamilton
Established in 1932, the historic Rock Garden stands as the proud birthplace of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Embracing sustainable trends in garden design, the Rock Garden inspires with its captivating colors and textures throughout all seasons.The Great Room, spanning 3,455 square feet, provides a versatile space ideal for weddings year-round at the Rock Garden from 100-150 guests.

Services Offered

The team at Royal Botanical Gardens can assist couples in a number of ways to help make their dream day a reality. RBG will organize a series of detials meetings to detail your event with floorplans, bar selections and enrichment add-ons.
RBG offers delicious locally-sourced catering options, proudly partnering with: Equal Parts Hospitality, City Farm Catering, fig&lemon, and Aunty's Kitchen, while RBG maintains the bar services for events.

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Reviews for Royal Botanical Gardens

H
Hiba Sent on 04/03/2025
5 out of 5 rating

A perfect space for an intimate wedding

Our experience at RBG was great, and we were given plenty of freedom to customize our wedding. We loved that they gave the option of using their preferred vendors, we ended up going with our own since the external vendor fees were relatively low. The staff are great and really helpful in making sure garden guests do not enter the wedding space. Our photos around the rock garden looked straight out of a fairytale.
If you book this venue, expect a lot more work than a full-service venue, however this makes room for customization and the staff will support you as much as they can. Overall, it was a magical day in the gardens and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.
H
Hamna Sent on 01/03/2025
4.6 out of 5 rating

Beautiful Wedding Venue

I got married at RBG in August of 2024 in the atrium and escarpment garden. Overall I had a really good experience with the venue and staff, I found them to be very accommodating with my changing requests and timelines. I met with the venue coordinator a few times leading up to the wedding and found them to be very helpful with figuring out setup, vendors, arrangements etc. Although it was unconventional, they even helped me find a date that worked within two months of reaching out, so I am really appreciative of their staff for helping make things happen so quickly.

The gardens are absolutely stunning and the atrium itself has living wall panels which really bring the nature indoors.

The venue itself was perfect for what I wanted, but there is very little included in the space cost which means you ending paying quite a lot more for renting additional items whether it’s from the venue or from external vendors (e.g. only black conference chairs are included in the venue cost so I had to pay separately for better chairs) so I would flag that as something to be prepared for.
Matt
Matt Sent on 01/03/2025
4.8 out of 5 rating

Beautiful Wedding and Venue

We had our wedding at the RBG Rock Garden and couldn’t have imagined a more perfect venue. The day was flawless, thanks to the amazing staff who were there to help from start to finish. The setting was stunning, providing the perfect backdrop for beautiful photos. We highly recommend Geoff Shaw Photography—he captured every moment of our special day beautifully.
K
Karina Sent on 23/03/2025
4.8 out of 5 rating

Great venue - Wedding at the RBG - Rock Garden

Great place to celebrate your wedding. The gardens are beautiful. We received many compliments from our guests.
K
Kari Sent on 16/06/2024
4.6 out of 5 rating

Beautiful venue

The venue was beautiful and the staff is very nice. I'd recommend this place if you're planning your wedding for spring or summer.
K
Kourtney Sent on 23/10/2023
4.2 out of 5 rating

Lovely venue!

My husband and I fell in love with the venue spaces immediately.
Couldn’t have imagined our day anywhere else.
Kate
Kate Sent on 04/07/2023
3.2 out of 5 rating

You do it for the Gardens

When my husband and I first viewed the RBG we were completely captivated by the gardens. It was an easy yes for us to book our ceremony there. We paid everything up front as payment is due when booking.

From the time we booked to the time of our wedding we still had over a year. In that time the lady we were working with I guess moved on and we only found out about this 3 months prior to the wedding, and that was because I reached out to add more time for our ceremony. Then I was Informed. My partner and I were satisfied with the RBG - we just didn’t like how with the new people we were working with elements previously promised were changed. For example, the RBG only allows a certain number of people to stay and take photos- if you want more than the allocated number it is $11 / person, we were told we had to purchase liability insurance or else the wedding could not take place, and we did not have access to take photos whenever we wanted that day you have to book a timeframe.

Now, the RBG was gracious enough to honour our original contract and keep to what we were told during our booking process. It was just stressful on the time between being told all the new rules and them checking if they could honour what was previously told to us. If you choose them just make sure you keep a record of everything in writing.

Otherwise, we had an absolutely perfect ceremony and everything worked out as it should. We did enjoy our experience overall and time there.
Margaret
Margaret Sent on 24/05/2023
5 out of 5 rating

Fabulous venue

Got married at the Rock Gardens at the RBG - such a beautiful venue for the courtyard wedding and reception
A
Alex Sent on 14/10/2022
2 out of 5 rating

Very unprofessional, service was below par, food was below par for price

Well, our wedding "Planner" the individual assigned to us to help plan, was atrocious, we had to keep notes of what we said to her, she would ask us the same questions again and again, nothing was very clear it was VERY stressful, she was a nightmare. I simply wanted to know how big the dancefloor would be at the rock garden with max capacity, this was a NIGHTMARE to figure out, could I fit 10 people? 40? 100? ZERO indication.

Then the day before we get a day-of wedding planner, she was great. No complaints.
The day we toured, we met with the Wedding Sales MAnager, she was great, this was 1 WEEK before the wedding, when we FINALLY got photos of what the venue would look like.

The food was not good, it was fine at the tasting, was about 60% of what the tasting was. The beef wellington was dry and for having a bunch of foodies, I was embarassed. The appetizers if you could find them, were few and far between, for the price we paid, the fact that half the guests didn't even try some of them was an embarassment.

Then our reception finished early, so we wanted to open the bar, well there goes another FEW GRAND. I mean I would have agreed to close the bar early if I knew they would charge this, my previous wedding earlier in the year with family was a NO-CHARGE open-bar early open at the elora mills. This venue charged $10 per person + $15 a drink. for 30 minutes which was THOUSANDS of dollars, I find this hard to believe considering our average age was like 45 and half of them hardly drink.

Then the table service, MOST of the wine bottles were empty the entire dinner, I had to go and give the bar manager a large tip to get her to replace all the bottles, WHAT AN EMBARASSMENT!!! the groom, had to go and get them to do their job!!

The worst part for me was you want a rye and ginger? Well here is 90% ginger-ale and 10% rye, in a WATER GLASS! not a cocktail glass (which were right there), in a WATER GLASS. No doubles get served.
The shot glasses were not available 50% of the time because they only had 20!!! so I could not even do shots with all my cousins! SO EMBARASSING!
You cannot smoke anywhere near the building, so my 90 year old family members had to use their disabiltiy devices to walk 100 meters to smoke! NO SEATING FOR THEM!
None of the fireplaces outside were on!
They allowed all the wedding guests to come inside and see the bride and groom BEFORE the WEDDING!

The Lighting! O my god the lighting was terrible, their lights DO NOT DIM, you get full 100% lights for your dinner! they had a massive TV screen BLASTING white light across the whole room! I had to get ANGRY with the manager for her to finally turn it off (she siad only the A/V technician can and he left) WHO WOULD WANT a 20 foot TV screen blasting WHITE LIGHT across all your faces! WHO doesn't have dimmable lights in a $30,000 wedding????

Overall, just very angry with them, very unprofessional and I have a very sour taste in my mouth after spending all this money.

HIRE A PROPER CHEF
HIRE A PROPER WEDDING PLANNER
PAY FOR DIMMABLE LIGHTS
USE COCKTAIL GLASSES FOR COCKTAILS
MAKE SURE YOUR STAFF SMILE and our PLEASANT!
HAVE accessible SMOKING area for Disabled people!
BE CLEAR WITH EXPECATIONS on Seating and Dancefloor size!
TURN ON OUR OUTDOOR FIREplaces when its 10 degrees out
DON'T let guests inside before the ceremony!
HAVE YOUR HEAD OF WEDDING PLANNING reach out for feedback so we can tell you how terrible the whole experience was!
S
Samantha-Rose Sent on 26/09/2022
4.6 out of 5 rating

Beautiful venue!

The venue was beautiful! We got a ton of compliments about the food and the staff being great.
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Awards

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Royal Botanical Gardens Real Weddings

Kyle & Birgit
35 Photos · 07/Oct/2023
Jake & Michelle
24 Photos · 08/Jul/2023
Kate & Chris
8 Photos · 17/Jun/2023
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90 Photos · 06/Aug/2022
Angelina & Jordan
68 Photos · 16/Jul/2022
Angelina & Jordan
63 Photos · 16/Jul/2022

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Map

680 Plains Road W L7T 4H4 Burlington (Ontario)
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