Bailey Arboretum

The 2026 to 2027 rate card, line by line

This is the whole published schedule, and it is refreshingly short. An outdoor wedding reception for up to 130 guests is $9,000. An outdoor wedding ceremony is $2,500 from May through October and $3,500 on Saturdays year round. A site only ceremony, capped at 20 guests and 30 minutes, is $500. Indoors, a party in the Bailey House for up to 75 guests over four hours is $5,000, and a meeting or lecture for up to 40 over two hours is $2,000. The page marks all of it subject to change.

Note what those numbers are and are not. They are flat rentals for ground and building. They do not include catering, tent, valet, or anything that arrives on a truck, all of which are quoted separately by the vendors who supply them. So $9,000 is the start of your total rather than a version of it.

That structure is genuinely uncommon on Long Island, where the dominant model bundles room and food into a per head figure and never separates them again. Here you can see exactly what the site costs. You can also see exactly how much of your budget is still unaccounted for, which is the more useful half of the information.

The arboretum's own FAQ contradicts the rate card, and it is still live

There are two event pages on this website and they do not agree. The weddings and private events page carries the 2026 to 2027 rate card described above. A separate event FAQ page carries a different and much lower schedule. A traditional outdoor ceremony is $1,500 for up to 90 guests and a minimalist outdoor ceremony is $1,000 for up to 40. A site only ceremony is $500 for up to 20. A private party is $1,000 for site only, or $1,500 with tables and chairs, for 40 to 60 guests.

Both are first party. Both are reachable from a search. One of them is clearly old, because the same FAQ page still says the only 2021 dates available are selected weekdays and that 2022 reservations opened in September 2021. That page has not been touched in years.

We are treating the 2026 to 2027 rate card as current and the FAQ schedule as history, and printing both with their sources so you can see the difference rather than being surprised by it. The risk is real: a couple who finds the FAQ page first will walk into a conversation expecting $1,500 for a ceremony and be quoted $2,500 or $3,500.

The FAQ page is not useless, though. It carries deposit terms that appear nowhere else: a $500 security deposit for ceremonies, and 50 percent plus $1,000 for private events with the balance due 30 days prior. It also gives extra hours at $300. Confirm all of that, because it sits on the same page as the outdated fees.

Ceremonies happen in the Bird Garden or the Rose Arbor, and nowhere else

The event FAQ states that only two sites on the property are permitted for ceremonies: the Bird Garden and the Rose Arbor. That is an unusual restriction for a park of this size and it is worth knowing before you tour, because it removes the temptation to fall for a spot you cannot actually use.

Outdoor ceremony capacity is up to 100 on the current rate card. The reception grounds take up to 130. So a couple with 130 guests has more people at dinner than the ceremony site is rated for, which needs resolving with the office rather than assumed away.

Two private suites are available for the wedding party. The arboretum also prohibits petals, birdseed, rice and balloons, which are the four things people habitually throw at outdoor ceremonies. Tell your officiant and tell whoever is organising the exit.

No dancing indoors, because of the house

The Bailey House is old. The arboretum's own FAQ refers to it as the 200 year old Bailey House, and the property is described as built around the 1800s as the Munnysunk estate, with banker Frank Bailey later bringing in architect Craig Severance for renovations. No precise founding year is published, and we are not going to supply one.

The age has a direct operational consequence. There is no dancing and no DJ or live music inside the house, because of the structural condition of the building. No amplification is provided by the venue either. That rules out a conventional indoor reception at this address, full stop.

So the shape of a wedding here is fixed by the rules rather than by taste. Ceremony in the Bird Garden or at the Rose Arbor, reception outdoors on the grounds, and the house used for the wedding party, for shelter and for a smaller sit down. If your plan involves a band and a dance floor under a roof, this is the wrong venue and no amount of negotiating will change it.

Everything stops at 10pm, and weekend ceremonies stop at 3pm

All events must end promptly at 10pm with no exceptions, which is the arboretum's own wording on the point. Saturday and Sunday ceremonies must conclude by 3pm. Reception rental runs six hours in total with five of those hours with guests present, and a ceremony is capped at 90 minutes.

Those two constraints together define your day. A Saturday ceremony finishing at 3pm, followed by a five hour reception, puts you at roughly 8pm with a hard stop two hours later. That is a daytime wedding with an early evening tail, and it is a perfectly good format, but it is not the 6pm ceremony and midnight finish that most Long Island halls sell.

Additional hours are listed at $300 each on the FAQ page. Given the flat 10pm cutoff with no exceptions, it is worth clarifying what those additional hours can actually extend, since they cannot extend past the curfew.

You bring the caterer, the tent and the insurance certificate

The arboretum sells no food, so catering, tent and valet are all quoted separately. There is an approved local caterer list, and outside caterers may apply for approval provided they are licensed and insured. Florist, photographer and musicians are your own choice. Valet is available through Elite Parking Services.

Every vendor must supply a certificate of insurance naming Bailey Arboretum as additional insured. That is a routine requirement at public parks and a nuisance at the last minute, so collect the certificates early rather than in the final fortnight.

The rain plan is the one place where the two first party pages contradict each other most dangerously. The current rate card page offers an indoor ceremony setup for up to 50 guests. The older FAQ page says flatly that there is no indoor contingency for rain and instructs organisers to arrange their own tent. Both are the arboretum's own words. With an outdoor reception rated for 130 and an indoor fallback of at most 50, a tent is the sensible assumption regardless of which page turns out to be current.