The Cutting Garden

Catherine provided bouquets, boutonnieres and décor flowers for our wedding at another venue in the National Park. She was a pleasure to work with. She was prompt communicating, very professional, reasonably priced and reliable. Best of all, her flowers are beautiful!!! We gave her a few pictures for inspiration and she created our dream bridal bouquet and boutonnieres. She also provided an abundant selection of fresh, beautiful, local flowers for our DIY arrangements. Big thumbs up!!!

There seem to be a lot of mixed reviews on this place. From my experience as a bride and as a professional event planner, I want to offer some insight to prospective brides and party planners. If anyone has questions or clarifications, I would be happy to answer them to the best of my knowledge.
Catherine has reopened the Cutting Gardens for weddings with under 50 guests. While she used to host weddings with up to 300 attendees, she’s running a scaled-​down operation so she can focus on her work as an artist. This means the dance floor and standing tent are no longer available at the gardens.
The pricing structure has come down SIGNIFICANTLY and all the rates are available on the website. There are calculators and spreadsheets to help you plan the costs. What you get vs. what you pay for makes this venue an incredible gem.
What you get: The closest thing to Eden with access to the country home and
bathroom for your event of 50 or less attendees.
What you don’t get: Similar to renting a clubhouse or park site, the venue is designed to be very self-​service. You don’t need the hand-​holding and can’t expect on-​site supervision. Catherine has posted all of her recommended vendors to help you along the way. It’s very self-​service, and not at all because she’s unresponsive, but because the vendors are a close-​knit circle of friends who know how to work together and can help you every step of the way. Catherine has always been very responsive and helpful with me when I did have questions, but working with these vendors has clarified almost all of my questions.
From my experience, here is some advice:
1) Stick to Catherine’s list of recommended vendors and your event will run like clockwork. Her vendors are amazing (check out some of my other reviews).
2) If you are the bride, never ever be in the line of fire if things go wrong on your wedding day. There will always be hiccups in event planning, and you can’t be the one to stress them. Always have an onsite supervisor, and you can’t expect that to be your venue’s staff. With the money you save by picking this venue, I recommend hiring a coordinator for the day of (either Breva or Andee Clancy, who will also serve as your officiant). Side note– Andee also offers rentals such as linens, decorations and flatware that will save you $$$.
3) Provide wind-​resistant tents with side panels to shelter your guests from sun, wind and rain.
4) Read these reviews closely. One review is from someone who didn’t even have an event here. Another was a person in the wedding party reiterating negative feedback from a bride who had posted. Neither are customers speaking to firsthand experience. That’s really not fair to this small business, and it’s also a violation of Unilocal’s review guidelines. (bridal bullies, you have been flagged)
When I considered this venue, I weighed all the reviews as well as the dozens of gleaming posts on Facebook and decided this place was a safe bet. I am grateful that I did because my experience could not have been better. This is a gorgeous venue, Catherine is a wonderful hostess and my experience has been superb.

We had an end of September wedding here and it was absolutely lovely in every way. From my very first contact, Catherine, the owner, was so accommodating and accessible every step of the way. I should add that this was a destination wedding, and even planning from out of state went smoothly. I was in town a couple times during the planning, and it was easy to work with her — and always beautiful to visit the garden!
It seems that no matter what season it is, the garden has new life, filling the space with gorgeous colors and serenity. It is also perfectly located in a quaint town, near the beach, with a gorgeous mountain-​scape in the background. Perfect for my husband and I – as he loves the mountains, and I love the water. For our wedding photos, we were able to easily meet our photographer for a wonderful beach photo session (with mountains in every shot!), and finish up in the gorgeous setting of The Cutting Garden.
For the wedding, Catherine made stunning flower arrangements for us from the garden, including my bouquet — what a great eye for beauty! And at the very last minute, when the centerpieces that I had bought were just falling apart, she allowed us to cut flowers from her cutting garden and everything ended up coming together just perfectly.
It was a beautiful day — even despite a few raindrops during our ceremony.
We had the reception in a tented area adjacent to the ceremony area, which kept things simple, dry, and everyone happy! The whole thing was enjoyable, beautiful, and went off without a hitch — much in thanks, to The Cutting Gardens and to Catherine herself. I continue to receive compliments about how much fun everyone had, how beautiful the location was, and how smoothly everything went.
I cannot recommend this place highly enough — from the location to the ownership — five stars, all the way!

The Cutting Garden is a beautiful, beautiful place suitable for any occasion. It is well organized, well managed, and an inspiring place to be. Customers know exactly what they can expect because the contract between owner and customer is clear, concise and complete.

Our wedding went beautifully and the gardens was gorgeous!!! We were fortunate that our wedding wasn’t supervised. It did get pretty chilly for those who weren’t dancing!!! I’m thinking outdoor heaters or maybe blankets would of been a good idea.
We did have a few glitches with communication but it all got ironed out in the end.
~ I just received a comment from the owner on my previous review that she has decided to close down the Cutting Gardens for Weddings…
All I have to say about that is…
I just wish the owners personality was as beautiful as her gardens!!!
Success is deeper than the beauty of your venue best wishes to you too!

Gorgeous, gorgeous place. My wedding here was so wonderful, and the view, the gardens, the way they planned the layout of the ceremony and reception were so perfect. Their pricing is so affordable, it was a relief after writing (for us) so many huge checks and saving for years for our big day. Definitely the beautiful setting, and of course having so many great friends and family to share it with were my favorite parts of the day. They are wonderfully organized and have so many things in place to help the day go smoothly!
I’ll mention the little hiccups that happened but overall our experience was great.
Hiccup #1–
Way back almost a year before the wedding, we booked the venue and talked about wedding colors– pink, yellow and peach. A May 20^th wedding was perfect, and we were amazed by the gorgeous gardens in the spring. However, about a month before the wedding, we met with them to talk flowers. They had emailed us a pricing chart showing DIY flower pricing, up to florist-​arranged flowers that they bring in from elsewhere, which are obviously at the higher price point. My mom and I thought that since we had several aunts and sisters-​to-​be who wanted to be involved in the wedding, the DIY option would be a fun way to let folks get involved and get to know each other working on a project while also saving some money, so we filled out the chart accordingly and brought it to the meeting. The first thing that happened– they told me the wedding was so early in the year they might not have much at all available in my colors. This would have been something I’d prefer to hear MUCH earlier in planning stages– like, before my wedding party and I spend $$$ on decorations, attire, etc, and hours crafting. I like to try to be flexible, so we settled on pastels instead of specifics, and I felt fine with that. The day of the wedding, the maids’ bouquets and mine, the boutineers and corsages were all in my wedding colors and were absolutely gorgeous. The flowers for the table settings were beautiful, but looked like they were for a different wedding. Not a lot of pastels, and didn’t match the bouquets– at all. No biggie to me, they were still lovely and I thought they looked great, but some brides would probably have felt this was a big deal.
We were also discouraged from doing DIY flower arranging– which was curious since they sent me a price sheet based on it. Understandably, a florist’s arrangement is going to look better than my untrained aunt’s, but we’ve all stuck flowers in a vase… we reached a compromise and had the florist handle the more time consuming arrangements. The table arrangements looked great– turns out I have some very talented family and friends!- and I just wish the owner hadn’t made me feel so much that I was making a big mistake letting them do it– they were lovely and everyone had fun making them. However, I really appreciated Kindryn, their florist, making suggestions on ways to save a little on flowers and keep it pretty, and she made heartbreakingly beautiful bouquets, corsages and boutineers.
Hiccup #2–
We had SO MANY last minute RSVPs. So many that we paid the caterer so much more than our original estimate. Some of the additions were so last-​minute that we had to put out extra tables the morning of the wedding, and we decided not to worry about covering the rectangular tables with the cloths my sister-​in-​law brought for me. Is that tacky? I didn’t really care, and didn’t notice until looking at pictures that they did have cloths on them. So after the wedding, I’m basking in the happy glow of such an amazing day, and Catherine pulls me aside to tell me, «we had to cash your damage deposit because we put tablecloths on the tables that weren’t covered». This was to cover for the tablecloths that if they had asked me, I would have said NO, please don’t do that. For tablecloths I had myself in the trunk of my car, and could have gotten out if I had wanted to. NOBODY ASKED ME and I thought it was really not cool to present it in that way, at the end of my great day. I guess it’s nice that they wanted my tables to be covered, but what the heck??? Why not ask me if you’re going to charge me that amount for something I don’t even want done? It kind of put a damper on my bouyant, great mood– definitely not what the bride wants at the end of the wedding day.
I know I turned bright red, I was so mad I had a hard time getting words out, and I tried my best to be polite and say why I thought that wasn’t right– and Catherine did agree not to take out of the damage deposit, so in the end it turned out OK… but darn it, it was my wedding day and that was NOT the way to cap it off.
To sum up: beautiful setting, helpful organization and layout, ask questions and ask them early, make sure all your details are in your contract and just make sure you are specific and I feel sure you will love it for an outdoor wedding venu