The Grove Las Vegas Wedding Photos

The Grove is an outdoor garden wedding venue at 8080 Al Carrison Street, in the northwest corner of the Las Vegas valley near Floyd Lamb Park. It has been hosting weddings since 1991. The property is built around an almond orchard, with a pond, a wooden footbridge, date palms and two indoor reception rooms on the same grounds, and it holds up to 200 guests.

I’m McKenzie. I’ve photographed weddings in Las Vegas every year since 2010, more than 300 of them, and The Grove is one of the venues I keep getting asked about. Every photo on this page was made here, at two different weddings, so what you are looking at is the venue rather than one couple’s best day. One is a navy and burgundy wedding with a lazo ceremony under the trees and a reception indoors afterward. The other is a bride in cowboy boots and a groom in a tan suit, married at the same arbor on a cool evening with patio heaters running beside the aisle.

If The Grove is on your list, send me a message and tell me what date you are looking at. I would love to hear about it.

What The Grove looks like in wedding photos

The trees do most of the work here. The ceremony site sits inside an orchard of mature trees with small lights wound around the trunks, and the venue hangs long lace panels up between them so the aisle runs under a tented ceiling of fabric and branches. In a photo that gives you two things at once. The canopy spreads the afternoon light evenly across everyone’s faces, so nobody is squinting into the sun during their vows, and the lights in the trunks turn into soft glowing circles behind you as the sun drops. Several frames in the gallery are lit almost entirely by those strings.

The second thing is the water. There is a pond with a wooden footbridge across it and date palms standing over the whole thing, a short walk from the ceremony site. That is where portraits happen. Both weddings on this page used the same bridge, in different light and different weather, and the two sets of photos look nothing alike.

The third thing worth knowing is that the reception moves indoors. The two banquet rooms are white and neutral with string lights across the ceiling, which means the room takes whatever color you hand it. In the gallery you can see one of them washed blue and violet by uplighting during the dancing, with a disco ball over the floor. If you have picked a palette, this is a room that holds it rather than fighting it.

What it takes to photograph a wedding at The Grove

The whole day happens inside one gate

Nobody gets in a car. The ceremony sites, the pond, the lawns and the two banquet rooms all open onto each other, so guests walk from the vows to dinner and you and I can step out for ten minutes of portraits after the lights come on and be back before anyone notices.

That matters more than it sounds like it should. Every drive on a wedding day comes out of your portrait time, and a venue that keeps everything on one property hands those minutes back to you. Sunset Gardens on the other side of town works the same way, and there is a full list of the Las Vegas venues and locations I photograph at if you are still comparing.

Ask what your package already includes

The Grove sells all inclusive wedding packages, which means one price covers most of the wedding rather than a room rental you then fill with vendors. That changes what you need to ask on your tour. Find out what is already in the number you are being quoted, what is not, and how bringing in your own vendors works, photography included. Get the answer in writing on the contract rather than in an email.

I have written up what the venue publishes about its packages in more detail in this article about getting married at The Grove. Pricing is the venue’s to quote, not mine, so treat that piece as a starting point and confirm the current numbers with them.

Every ceremony site here is outdoors, so plan around the weather

The venue’s three ceremony sites are all in the gardens, which means your ceremony is outside whatever the forecast says. One of the two weddings in the gallery ran cold enough that the venue put tall patio heaters on either side of the aisle, and they are visible in the photos. Las Vegas evenings cool off fast from November through March, so on a winter date, ask the venue what it provides and tell your guests to bring a layer.

Summer is the other end of the same question. From June through September the useful move is to push the ceremony later in the day, and that is worth talking through with me early, because your ceremony hour decides what your portraits look like more than any other choice you will make.

The best time of day for photos at The Grove

Plan the ceremony to end about an hour before sunset. That is the single most useful thing I can tell you about this venue. Ending there means the ceremony itself runs in full daylight under the tree canopy, and then you walk straight into the warmest light of the day for portraits at the pond and among the palms.

The orchard is more forgiving than most Las Vegas venues if you cannot get that timing. An open desert ceremony at four in the afternoon in July is hard on everybody. Here the trees are already doing the work, so an earlier start is workable, and the string lights mean the ceremony site still photographs well after dark.

Sunset in Las Vegas moves by more than three hours across the year, from about 4:30 in early December to about 8:00 in late June. Look up the sunset time for your actual date before you set your ceremony hour, then work backward from there. Sunrise and sunset times for any date are on the National Weather Service site for Las Vegas.

Getting married at The Grove

If you are booking The Grove, or trying to decide between it and somewhere closer in, I am happy to talk it through. I photograph Las Vegas weddings as the only photographer at every one of them, which means the person you talk to now is the person standing in the orchard on your date. Tell me what you are planning and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit.

Send me a message with your date and your venue. As soon as your date is confirmed with The Grove, reach out, because some months fill up and I would hate to miss you.