Las Vegas Country Club Wedding: Cost, Spaces and Timing

Las Vegas Country Club books weddings for people who are not members. The club markets weddings on its own weddings page and keeps a private events team that takes inquiries from anybody. The venue’s listing on Eventective says the clubhouse and grounds are now available for private events, where they were once reserved for the exclusive use of members. Golf is the part that stays members only. I’m McKenzie, I’ve photographed Las Vegas weddings every year since 2010, more than 300 of them, and I’ve photographed weddings at Las Vegas Country Club.

The club is at 3000 Joe W Brown Drive, about a mile east of the Strip and roughly half a mile from the convention center, so it’s a few minutes’ drive from almost any Strip hotel your guests are staying in. Behind the guard gate there’s a 220 acre community of golf course, water, mature trees and the homes that ring the fairways, with the Strip towers standing up behind all of it. The course was finished in 1967 and the club has been part of the city ever since. Weddings happen outside on the Presidential Lawn and inside in the Grand Dining Room, the Grand Terrace and the Rotunda, and around 300 to 350 guests is the practical ceiling in its regular spaces.

There are two separate charges here, and if you haven’t priced a country club before, the second one will be new to you. You pay a venue rental fee for the space, and then separately you commit to a minimum you will spend on food and drink with the club’s kitchen and bar. Wedding directories put the rental somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 and the food and beverage minimum at about $10,000 on a weekday and $12,000 on a weekend. On a Saturday, adding those two published figures together puts the floor at about $16,500 before service charge and tax.

Can non members get married at Las Vegas Country Club?

Yes. The club publishes wedding and catering pages on its own website, lists a private events team you can email, and keeps listings on wedding directories that all take inquiries from the public. Its own page calls the Presidential Lawn a sought after location for a wedding ceremony.

Golf is the separate question, and there the answer is no. Las Vegas Country Club is a private golf club, and the course is for members and their guests. Booking the Grand Dining Room for your reception doesn’t come with a tee time.

The one thing nobody publishes is whether a member has to sponsor your booking. No source says you need one and no source says you don’t, so put it on the list for your first call to the events office.

What weddings here actually look like

I’ve photographed a South Asian wedding at this club, and it’s the day that shows how much the property can hold. The baraat came in outside. The garland exchange happened at a floral mandap with family standing close enough to touch it. There were henna and bridal jewelry portraits before any of it started, and the reception ended with dancing in front of a wall of paper flowers. That’s a big, loud wedding with a lot of separate parts to it, and the grounds and the rooms handled all of it.

The other wedding I think of here was much quieter. There was a kiss on the lawn in front of the low clubhouse, and portraits out on the course at golden hour, in tall ornamental grasses that go gold when the sun drops behind them. The couple made a grand entrance past the wedding party. The night ended with dancing on the terrace, guests closed in a circle around them.

Those two weddings had almost nothing in common except the venue. If you’re wondering whether your kind of wedding fits here, that’s the answer: the club isn’t set up around one style.

What does a wedding at Las Vegas Country Club cost?

The club doesn’t publish a price, and the two main charges work differently from each other. The venue rental fee buys you the space for the day. The food and beverage minimum is a floor on what you spend with the club’s kitchen and bar, and your per person catering counts toward it. So if your minimum is $10,000 and your dinner and drinks come to $8,000, you still pay $10,000. If they come to $14,000, the minimum never comes up at all.

Here is what the wedding directories publish.

Line on the bill	Sunday through Thursday	Friday, Saturday and holidays
Venue rental, ceremony and reception	About $4,000 to $4,500	About $4,500 to $5,000
Venue rental, reception only	$3,000	$3,000 to $3,500
Food and beverage minimum	About $10,000	About $12,000
Catering, per person	Not published. The club quotes it off its own menus	Not published
Service charge and sales tax	Not published	Not published

Those figures come from Wedding Spot and The Knot rather than from a rate sheet the club publishes, and none of them carries a date. Some listings put Friday in the weekend tier and some put it with the weekdays, so a Friday date is one to confirm with the club. The Knot’s listing also says weddings here start at $13,486 for 50 guests, which is the directory’s own estimate rather than a club quote.

Add the published pieces up and you get the lowest the day can cost. For 120 guests on a Saturday:

• Venue rental for a ceremony and reception: $4,500 to $5,000
• Food and beverage minimum: $12,000
• Floor for the day: about $16,500 to $17,000

At 120 guests, that $12,000 minimum works out to $100 a head. If the club’s per person catering comes in under $100, you’ll be topping the bill up to reach the minimum. If it comes in over, the minimum stops mattering and your real food cost is the menu price times 120. The same set of charges on a Sunday through Thursday date comes to about $14,000 to $14,500, and the minimum there works out to about $83 a head. That arithmetic is mine, done on published components, and it is not a price the club has quoted anybody.

Two more charges get added on top of all of that, and they’re the ones that surprise people. Venues that do their own catering almost always add a service charge and sales tax to the food and drink, both calculated on the whole food and beverage spend rather than on the rental fee. Both are a percentage of your food and drink total rather than a flat fee, so the higher your minimum, the more they add. Neither percentage is published anywhere for this club, so when you ask for a quote, ask for the rental fee, the minimum, the per person catering, the service charge and the tax as five separate lines. Those five numbers are the only way to know what your day will actually cost.

Which space fits your wedding?

Las Vegas Country Club has outdoor ceremony space at the base of the course, one covered outdoor terrace, and indoor rooms seating from about 100 to about 150, with the biggest guest lists spread across the dining room and the terrace together. Your guest count is what narrows the choice. The counts below come from the venue’s directory listings.

Space	Indoors or outdoors	Roughly what it holds	What it is best for
Presidential Lawn	Outdoor	No seated count published. The regular spaces top out around 300 to 350	Ceremonies. Open lawn facing the lake and its waterfall
Presidential Garden	Outdoor	About 100 to 200 in one listing, up to 120 in another	Smaller ceremonies, with the waterfall behind you
Grand Terrace	Outdoor, covered	Around 350 seated, more standing	Cocktail hour and large receptions. Raised, overlooking the 9th green, with a wooden cover for shade and bistro lights
Grand Dining Room	Indoor	Up to 150 seated	Seated dinners. A long curved hall with floor to ceiling windows onto the course and the lake
Grand Dining Room and Grand Terrace together	Both	Over 350	The largest guest lists
Rotunda	Indoor	Up to 100 seated	Small weddings and indoor ceremonies. A round room with original rock walls, a dome of wooden arches and a golden chandelier
Players Lounge, Boardroom Suite, Executive Suite	Indoor	Small, no counts published	Side rooms
Indoor tennis pavilion	Indoor	Up to 1,200, for an extra fee	Guest lists nothing else on the property can hold

The Lawn and the Garden are both outdoor space by the same lake at the base of the course. The Lawn is the open one, facing the lake, and the one the club names for ceremonies. The Garden is the smaller one, listed at about 100 to 200 guests in one directory and up to 120 in another, with the waterfall as your backdrop. Name the one you want when you call, because the listings treat them as two different spaces.

For most guest lists the path through the day is the same one: ceremony outside on the Lawn, cocktails on the Grand Terrace while the staff resets the room for dinner, then dinner and dancing in the Grand Dining Room. It makes for an easy day, because all three are a short walk apart. Under about 100 guests, the Rotunda can hold the reception on its own, and it is the room to ask about if you want the ceremony indoors too. Over about 350, you’re combining the dining room with the terrace.

The indoor rooms are also your weather plan. If it’s too windy or too wet for the lawn, the ceremony moves inside, and the room is a few steps away rather than across town. What isn’t published is who makes that call and how many hours before the ceremony it gets made, so settle that on your tour.

Getting married outside on the lawn: light, heat and timing

The Presidential Lawn is the reason most couples call this venue, and the two things that decide whether it works on your date are the month and the start time.

Start with heat, because it’s what decides whether your guests are comfortable. Average high temperatures in Las Vegas run in the high 80s in May, near 100 in June, over 100 in July and August, in the mid 90s in September, and back to about 81 in October. An outdoor ceremony puts everybody in chairs, outside, for 20 or 30 minutes. March through May and October into November are the months when sitting outside that long is comfortable. June through September, a lawn ceremony has to be late in the day, and even then it’s warm. I wrote more about picking your month in the best time of year to get married in Las Vegas.

Light is the other half of it, and it’s the part couples underestimate. The hour before sunset is when the course looks the way you want it to look in your photos, and the middle of the afternoon is when the sun is hardest on everybody’s face. So I ask for a ceremony start about two hours before sunset. That leaves room for the ceremony, for family photos right after it, and then for the two of you to get out on the grounds while the light is still soft. Sunset here swings about three and a half hours between December and June, so a 5:00 p.m. ceremony is full daylight in one and full dark in the other. Las Vegas sunset times by season:

Time of year	About when the sun sets	Outdoor ceremony start I would ask for
Late March	About 7:00 p.m.	5:00 p.m.
Late June	Close to 8:00 p.m., the latest sunsets of the year	6:00 to 6:30 p.m.
Late September	6:30 p.m.	4:30 p.m.
Late December	About 4:30 p.m.	2:30 p.m.

A December wedding here is the one to plan carefully. With the sun down by about 4:30, an evening ceremony means every portrait happens after dark, and the course you’re paying for disappears. That’s the wedding where a first look is worth doing, because it moves your portraits into the daylight you actually have.

Photos on the course and around the grounds

Almost everything worth photographing here is within a short walk of the clubhouse. That saves you more time on a wedding day than it sounds like it would. Nobody gets put in a car, and nobody marches a wedding party across a fairway in heels.

The lake is the best of the portrait spots. There’s a white arched bridge over the water, and those are my favorite portraits from this venue. The lawn in front of the low clubhouse works for the two of you alone after the ceremony. The old trees give you shade in the middle of the day. And out on the course in the last light there are those tall ornamental grasses, which glow when the sun comes through them.

Going out onto the course itself is the club’s call rather than mine to promise. It’s a working golf course with play on it, so whether a cart is available and how far out you can go depends on the day. Even if the answer is no, the lake, the bridge, the lawn and the trees around the clubhouse are enough to fill a portrait session.

How a wedding day flows here

The directory listings say the venue fee includes a bridal suite, so the day starts on the property instead of at a hotel across town. From there it moves between three spaces that are all a short walk apart, so nothing in your timeline runs late because of travel.

Here is a sample day built around a 5:00 p.m. ceremony, which is about right for late March.

• 2:00 p.m. Getting ready in the suite. Hair and makeup finishing, dress and details photographed, wedding party arriving.
• 4:00 p.m. Optional first look somewhere quiet on the grounds, plus wedding party photos while guests are still on their way.
• 4:30 p.m. Guests arrive and are seated on the Presidential Lawn.
• 5:00 p.m. Ceremony. Most run 20 to 30 minutes.
• 5:30 p.m. Family photos, right where the ceremony was, while everyone is still gathered.
• 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Cocktail hour on the Grand Terrace.
• 6:00 p.m. The two of you slip out for 20 minutes of portraits in the last of the light.
• 6:30 p.m. Grand entrance and dinner in the Grand Dining Room.
• 8:00 p.m. Toasts, first dance, and the floor opens.

Wedding Spot’s listing puts the music cutoff at 1:00 a.m., which is generous compared with a lot of Las Vegas venues. Two things aren’t up to the venue at all. The first is your Nevada marriage license, which you get from the county before the day (here is how that works). The second is how many hours of photography coverage a timeline like that one needs.

Catering, what is included, and bringing your own vendors

Catering is in house. The club has its own kitchen and bar, which is why the food and beverage minimum exists, and there’s no published path for bringing in an outside caterer. If you have a menu that matters to you, that conversation happens with the club’s chef, and the listings say the menu can accommodate different tastes and dietary restrictions.

The venue fee covers most of what a reception physically needs. Directory listings agree on what’s included, and the bridal suite is the item worth noticing first. The rest of the list covers tables, chairs, linens, china, flatware, glassware, lighting, sound and audio equipment, event planning, setup, cleanup, and parking on site. Valet is listed as available too. Included parking matters at a gated property like this one, because guests always want to know where to leave the car.

Can you bring your own photographer to Las Vegas Country Club?

Yes. The Knot’s listing says couples can work with outside vendors, and reviews on that listing describe couples bringing their own vendors and their own decorations. No preferred vendor list turned up anywhere, and nothing published says any vendor category has to come from the club. Vendor coordination runs through the club’s private events team.

A listing isn’t a contract, though. Get the vendor policy into your contract before you sign, including whether your vendors need to send the club anything like proof of insurance.

Who this venue suits, and who it does not

Las Vegas Country Club is a good fit for a full wedding day with a real guest list, somewhere between about 100 and 350 people, where you want the ceremony outdoors and dinner indoors without anybody driving between the two. It suits out of town guests, because it’s a few minutes from the Strip hotels they’re already booked into. It suits a wedding with a lot of parts to it, a cultural wedding with several ceremonies, or a day that runs long, since the music can go until 1:00 a.m. And it suits couples who want grass, water and old trees in their photos instead of a ballroom wall.

It’s a harder fit in three cases. The first is a small wedding. With a food and beverage minimum around $10,000 to $12,000 no matter how many people you bring, 30 guests pay the same floor as 200, and the cost per guest gets steep. The second is a wedding on a tight budget, because the rental fee and the minimum together start around $14,000 before catering runs over, before the service charge, and before tax. The third is a summer daytime wedding outdoors. In July and August the lawn is over 100 degrees in the afternoon, and no amount of planning fixes that for guests in suits.

Common questions about Las Vegas Country Club weddings

Can you get ready at Las Vegas Country Club?

Yes. A bridal suite is included in the venue fee, according to the directory listings, so hair and makeup happen on the property rather than at a hotel. How early you can be in the room isn’t published, and it’s worth asking about early, because it sets the start of your whole day.

How much walking does a wedding at Las Vegas Country Club involve?

Very little. The suite, the lawn, the terrace and the dining room are all a short walk from each other inside one building and the grounds beside it. That makes this an easy venue for older guests and for anybody in shoes they can’t walk far in, and it means no shuttle between your ceremony and your reception.

Can you bring your own decorations to Las Vegas Country Club?

Reviews on The Knot’s listing describe couples bringing in their own decorations alongside their own vendors. What isn’t published is the detail that always matters with decor: what can be hung, taped or staked, and what has to be freestanding. Put that in writing with the events team along with your vendor list.

Is a weekday wedding at Las Vegas Country Club cheaper?

Yes, by roughly $2,500 on the published figures. A Sunday through Thursday date drops the rental fee by about $500 and the food and beverage minimum by $2,000, which is the single biggest saving you can make on this venue. If your guest list can handle a Thursday or a Sunday, take it.

If Las Vegas Country Club is your venue, I would love to talk

The thing I like most about photographing here is how easy the day is on everybody. The suite, the lawn, the terrace and the dining room are all a short walk apart, so you’re never in a car. And then there’s the lake, the white bridge, the old trees and a golf course that turns gold about the time dinner starts.

I’d be so happy to shoot your wedding there. I’m the photographer at every wedding I book, so nobody gets sent in my place, and my rate is $300 an hour when you book two hours or more. Eight hours is what most couples choose for a full wedding day, and there’s no travel fee anywhere in Clark County. You can see more of the work on my wedding photography page and every rate on my pricing page, and if you’re still working out the photography line in your budget, I wrote up what a wedding photographer costs in Las Vegas separately.

I can only hold a date once your venue and date are confirmed, so as soon as you’ve signed with the club, email me at mckenzie@msweddingimage.com or send me a message here and tell me about your day. I’d love to hear about it.