Minnesota Zoo

Discovery Bay at the MN Zoo was the perfect place for our reception. Jessica, our coordinator, was fantastic! She was very responsive to all of our questions. The night of the event, everything ran smoothly. Our event manager, Doug, was perfect! He was always willing and ready to help, but stayed invisible as to not disturb the party. They were extremely accommodating to our last minute guest changes. It was great not having to worry about anything.

Beautiful place to get marriedStaff was awesomeCan't say enough about the MN Zoo

The MN Zoo is absoulutely the best venue for a wedding. Discovery Bay provides entertainment for all ages and has so much room for you and your guests. The atmosphere is so romantic and unique people will admire your wedding for years to come. This place is so unforgetable and affordable for what you get. I highly recommend this location and the dolphins are swimming behind the head table the whole time, just amazing.

Overall I was very satisfied with the Monnesota Zoo. The reps were professional but hard to reach. Discovery Bay was gorgeous and my night went perfect!

Awesome all the way. They have 3 rooms you can choose from. We got married and ate in front of the dolphin tank! It was so beautiful. I just loved every aspect of it! Plus there were things for the guest to do, they could see the exhibits in the area, and touch sea creatures in the tide pool and sharks in the shark pond which was in the middle of the venue. Very neat!

My husband and I had our wedding reception at the Minnesota Zoo in Discovery Bay. It was absolutely beautiful and the sharks and fish provided excellent entertainment. The food was good, but they were not able to provide a satisfactory vegan item (so we had 2 vegetarian entrees and lots of appetizers). Definitely a great place to have a reception in February - you get a free wedding cake! (and the cake was very good). There are some sound restrictions (no bass, etc.) for the animals but all in all a wonderful place for a reception or even a ceremony.

The Zoo was very unique which is what I wanted. There was no decoration needed - because, hello - dolphins! We had a lot of kids at our wedding - 5 in the bridal party alone so I wanted something for them to do. After renting the zoo, we didn't do anything besides center pieces and it was gorgeous. So you can decide if the cost of the zoo would equal the cost of tule, chair covers, lights, etc. that you might spend somewhere else. Flexibility was a challenge. The will not let you in before 6PM. This can't really be helped on their part though because the zoo closes at 4 and they have to set up for your event. I really didn't want guest to have to kill time between the ceremony and the reception, but the church was firm on 2pm and the zoo was firm on 6pm so I had to get over that. But from what I hear from friends this is typical of event halls.As far as quality of service, my biggest complaint was that I was told that I could come back on my 1 year anniversary and recieve a free cake topper. I came back and they wanted me to pay $20 for it. It was my word against theirs. My biggest suggestion to anyone planning a wedding is to get EVERYTHING in writing - even the small stuff that seems insignificant. Don't assume you are on the same page until you see it in print.

It was an amazing day. There were no glitches, everything ran smoothly. They were professional, helpful, wonderful.

We absolutely loved having our wedding reception at the Minnesota Zoo. In terms of unique locations, you can't get much better than this... almost six years later, people still talk about the wedding.There are three rooms available to choose from... the area above the Tropics Trail, the normal 'zoo dining' area, and the area down by the dolphin exhibit. We had our receiving line on the Tropics Trail; we stationed bridal party members throughout the trail to greet guests as they walked through the trail. We stood above the reef exhibit with our parents. Below, in the coral reef hallway, we set up an exotic looking nacho appetizer that was a hit (almost none left when we made it down there ourselves). We also hosted a bar for one hour. It was set up with tables and chairs at the head of the Tropics Trail.Dinner was served in the normal dining area of the zoo. The zoo took care of covering the 'ugliness' of shop storefronts. It was great. The only downside to this room was that we needed to decorate it ourselves, and we couldn't get in to the room until an hour after the zoo closed. The wedding was in the winter, so if I remember correctly the zoo closed at 4pm; we set up starting at 5pm. SO, if you do your own centerpieces, make sure you have people available to help set them up before people arrive.Also, the dolphin area was supposed to be booked for another wedding. However, that wedding was canceled (oops - false alarm). SO, the zoo people let us go down and take pictures before our guests arrived. That was great, though it was too bad our guests couldn't just walk through that area on their way to dinner.As for food, the meals were fantastic. A downside was that there were extra costs associated with bringing in a cake from outside. Instead, we used their cake and were very happy. They let us flavor the tiers differently, AND we had a yummy taste testing a few weeks before the event (free). We had a champagne toast, and hosted beer and wine all evening.We brought our own DJ in and that went smoothly.One thing to keep in mind is the reception start time is dependent on the time the zoo closes. There is a minimum of one hour between close and event start time if I remember. Finally, I don't have a great memory of how much actual cost ended up being. We did most other things cheap, so this is where we spent money. We had just over 200 guests.Finally, we had no issues with our zoo catering contact. Everything went very smoothly.