Old Westbury Gardens

Old Westbury Gardens does not have a wedding department so much as three of them, and picking the wrong one costs you weeks. Fifty guests is the dividing line. Under it you deal with the Gardens directly. Over it you deal with an outside planning company that holds the exclusive, and you are building a tented event on a 200-acre estate essentially from scratch.

Three inboxes, and which one is yours

The Gardens’ private events page splits it cleanly. Micro ceremonies, bridal showers and private events of 50 guests or fewer go to weddings@oldwestburygardens.org. Large-scale tented celebrations go to In Any Event New York, named as the exclusive planners for large scale celebrations at Old Westbury Gardens.

In Any Event’s Old Westbury microsite splits it again: large-scale celebrations to Christie there, photo shoots and ceremonies under 50 guests back to Gardens staff, baby and bridal showers under 50 to a third company, Polka Dot Pound Cake. Three contacts, three sets of rules, one property. Match your headcount to the right inbox before you write the first email.

The Gardens’ own wording repays attention: limited opportunities for exclusive, large-scale tented celebrations. This is a public botanical garden and a nonprofit first. Wedding dates are a small rationed slice of the season, and nobody is obliged to sell you one.

The photography permit is the only published wedding price, and it is exact, and it is exact

Old Westbury publishes a full photography permit schedule, which is more than nearly any estate on the Island does. Wedding, engagement and portrait sessions run 90 minutes: $350 for sessions before 3:30pm, $475 for sessions at or after 3:30pm. Twenty guests are included in the fee, 21 or more adds $75, and the hard ceiling is 26. Photographers and vendors are not counted.

Permits must be requested at least two weeks ahead. Cancel four or more weeks out for a full refund; inside four weeks there is a $150 cancellation fee; inside 24 hours there is no refund. Up to three wedding parties can hold permits on the grounds at once, so the garden you booked may have another couple in it.

One caveat. As of this writing the permit page still gives the season as April 2 to November 23, 2025, every day except Tuesdays, with blackout dates of August 22, September 18 and 19, and October 11. Confirm the 2026 dates and fees by phone rather than assuming they rolled over unchanged.

What a tented wedding here costs, which is nothing anyone will say

Neither the Gardens nor In Any Event publishes a site fee, a rental rate, a minimum spend or a tented capacity. In Any Event’s microsite points to an “Investment, policies and guidelines” document inside its 2025-26 Celebrations guide, and that document is not public. So the honest answer is that the cost of a large wedding at Old Westbury Gardens cannot be established from the internet, and any directory quoting you a per-head number for it is guessing. Budget it the way a raw-estate build actually works: site fee, tent and flooring, a full-service caterer with a mobile kitchen, then power, restrooms, lighting and a rain call. The cost calculator gets you an order of magnitude on the catering half. The planner supplies the rest, and it will not be small.

Your guests are walking into a paid attraction

The 2026 season runs April 1 to October 31, open daily except Tuesdays, 10:00am to 6:00pm. General admission is $22, $20 for ages 62 or older and for full-time students with valid ID, $12 for youth aged 7 to 17, free for children 6 and under. Westbury House itself closes at 5:30 p.m. on weekdays and 5:15 p.m. on weekends, with final admission at 5:00 p.m.

Those closing times are not trivia. If the house is meant to be part of the day rather than a backdrop, it dictates when photographs happen and therefore when the ceremony starts.

Westbury House, 1906

John S. Phipps and Margarita Grace Phipps built the Charles II style house in 1906 to George A. Crawley’s design, and the property still runs to 200 acres of formal gardens, landscaped grounds, woodlands, ponds and lakes. That is the reason to take this on.

It is also the reason the work is real. A raw estate hands you a setting and a vendor list and leaves everything in between to you: kitchen, power, restrooms, tent, rain plan, load-in. If that sounds like more than you want, the Gold Coast houses that come with a kitchen are one click away, and they are not a lesser choice.