About this vendor
If you’re looking for a unique and unforgettable wedding venue, look no further than ZooTampa at Lowry Park, located in Tampa, FL. ZooTampa allows couples to exchange their vows surrounded by exotic animals and tropical greenery, making it a day to remember for everyone in attendance. As well as having an amazing experience, you’ll be supporting a local non-profit, with funds going towards the conservation of endangered wildlife.
ZooTampa at Lowry Park is one of the most popular zoos in the southeastern US, receiving almost one million visitors per year. Containing 56 acres of exhibits with over 1,000 animals, this multi-award-winning zoo offers up-close animal encounters, educational programming, and fun activities for families. Its naturalistic habitats ensure the maximum wellbeing of its animals, and it has won accolades for its animal conservation programs.
What You'll Love About ZooTampa at Lowry Park
Couples love this venue for how incredibly unique it is and describe it as magical and one-of-a-kind. They also praise the friendly and efficient staff. To learn more about the fun and unique experience they enjoyed, check out the reviews.
Amenities + details
Ceremony Area
Covered Outdoors Space
Dressing Room
Handicap Accessible
Indoor Event Space
Liability Insurance
On-Site Accommodations
Outdoor Event Space
Reception Area
Wireless Internet
Ceremony Types
- Civil Union
- Commitment Ceremony
- Elopement
- Interfaith Ceremony
- Non-Religious Ceremony
- Religious Ceremony
Settings
- Ballroom
- Garden
- Historic Venue
- Park
- Restaurant
- Trees
Venue Service Offerings
- Bar & Drinks
- Cakes & Desserts
- Destination Weddings
- Destination Wedding Packages
- Destination Wedding Planning
- Food & Catering
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Reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help
you make those big decisions with ease.
4.7
out of 5.022 reviews
Planning a wedding is by far the worst thing I’ve ever done with my life. It’s so stressful and annoying, and it just gets worse and worse the closer the day gets. But everyone at ...
Lowry Park Zoo was beyond incredible. I’m such a procrastinator, but they managed to get everything together. I was so worried the wedding day was going to be hectic and annoying, but the events team and staff made everything PERFECT. Everything ran so smoothly. Better than I expected, actually. I didn’t have to worry about anything. I am forever grateful to everyone at the zoo for making my wedding the absolute best it could have possibly been. Definitely choose them for your venue. It’s SO worth it, I swear!
When looking for a wedding venue, me and my now wife wanted a location that would be a fun and unique experience, and ZooTampa more than delivered. From the first meeting with thei...
r event staff, they were able to walk us around the venue and paint a picture of all the possible ways ZooTampa can host a wedding.
We were very impressed with all of the amenities provided by the venue. The outdoor and indoor areas ZooTampa offered were perfect for the ceremony and reception. One of the highlights was the cocktail hour, which was located next to the Giraffe habitat. Our guests were delighted to see one of the Zoo's Giraffe's out during this part of the wedding. The food that was provided by the Zoo catering team was fantastic. We had Ribeye, Chicken parmesan, and Mushroom ravioli on our menu and the staff was able to accommodate to any dietary requests. Lastly, the ZooTampa staff went above and beyond to make sure everything went smoothly on our special day. Highly recommend.
My fiancé proposed me at Zoo Tampa on December 4, 2020, and it was an unforgettable moment! They pretended to be just a regular Koala encounter but actually it was a surprise and a...
very well planned proposal. My fiancé told me that the personnel at Zoo Tampa was extremely helpful, nice and kind. We are highly recommend this facility!
My now husband and I didn’t have a dream vision for our wedding during our engagement. We didn’t want to spend a huge amount of money on the wedding because we were paying for it o...
urselves. We had toured 2 venues and looked at dozens of websites for local places (we live in Pinellas County) such as beach hotels, museums, etc. by the time we toured ZooTampa at Lowry Park.
We had the pleasure of meeting Courtney for our tour of the zoo to see where weddings, cocktail hour, and reception could take place. We were informed of the additional packages to add that would allow for giraffes and elephants to be out on the savannah for the event. I am an animal lover – so naturally the possibility of having animals at our wedding sold me. We met about the contract and the choices we made were very reasonable for our budget. We were set and ready with our venue around August of 2019 for a November 2020 wedding in Africa Circle with a reception in Reilly Reserve.
And then Covid happened. While we began our wedding planning adventure with Karlin, we completed the process with Courtney (our tour guide). I cannot stress enough how AMAZING these two women were during everything. Courtney was super attentive. Communication was never an issue for us. She always replied as quickly as possible to all of my questions, concerns, and anxieties about the wedding relating to normal planning, Covid precautions, and weather plans. Just prior to our big day, Karlin was back and she really knew how to make a wedding flow without any hiccups. Courtney and Karlin were a dream team for us.
Now for the main event – THE WEDDING! It was more than I could ever have imagined! November 7, 2020 was just after the time change, and our ceremony began at 6pm (when zoo is closed and only your wedding guests remain). It was dark, but the market lighting in Africa Circle was beautiful. Just as I was about to walk down the aisle with my dad, Courtney tells me the lanterns in the trees are on. Looked like it was straight out of Tangled! As a Disney fanatic, it was icing on my ceremony cake. Heck yes! The patio alongside Reilly’s Reserve was a great cocktail hour space with delicious food and drinks. The giraffes were out (we paid for that) and one laid down right behind the bar. Our guests loved the uniqueness of our zoo wedding and being so close to the animals. Reilly’s Reserve was the perfect space for our intimate wedding and the food was beyond delicious – everyone raved about the mashed potatoes!
In all, ZooTampa was the perfect wedding venue for our wedding. Great communication, delicious food, and our dream wedding brought to life.
ZooTampa was a unique, magical venue for our wedding! The Customer Care was second to none and Courtney and the Team ensured that everything went smoothly! We loved being photobom...
bed by the giraffes during the ceremony, and Riley's was beautiful for our reception! Thank you to ZooTampa for making memories we will never forget!!
The professionalism, promptness, and pure interest they have in your special day made everything flow easily and without a hitch.
The setting was definitely awesome and for the most part it was a great night. There were communication errors but overall we had a great night! Thought we were gonna be able to fe...
ed the giraffes but I guess they were sold out.
Our wedding at ZooTampa was amazing and everything we could have asked for! Karlin was the best and communicated with me all throughout our engagement. She was super helpful and ma...
de sure all of our requests were met.
I highly recommend the Zoo as such a great venue to have a wedding. All of our guests were super excited to be at the Zoo and loved being able to see the Giraffes during our ceremony and then being able to feed them.
We had the best time and I would go back a thousand times to relive that night.
We cannot recommend ZooTampa enough as a wedding venue, especially if you have a love of animals! The entire process was so simple- having the ceremony and reception all in one pla...
ce, the catering taken care of, and the alcohol as part of the package just made the wedding planning process as stress free as possible. We had about 125 guests and had our ceremony at the Africa circle, the cocktail hour along the walkway of the Savannah (with giraffe feedings!), and the reception in Savannah Oasis. The food was amazing and the menu tasting was fantastic. We are big craft beer lovers so we were able to request kegs of our favorite local beer and they were able to get them for us, plus varieties of wine and liquor. If at any point our DJ or photographer needed to see the set up/locations prior to the wedding, they were more than welcome to do so. We had a great bridal suite on site that we were able to access in the late morning. Be aware that your wedding will be taking place after the park closes, so 6 PM at the earliest. Ours was in November, so it did get dark before we started taking photos, but they were still amazing. During the summer months, you should have beautiful sunset pictures. We worked with Karlin and her team of ladies and all of our needs were met! Thank you, ZooTampa!
Getting married at Zoo Tampa was the unique and memorable experience my husband and I wanted for our guests. The zoo was the only venue that we visited that offered two separate s...
paces for the ceremony and reception, which was very important to me. All of the staff at the zoo was super helpful and very attentive on the day of our wedding. The food was delicious and having the animals out during cocktail hour made our guests night and looked super cool in the background of our pictures. The zoo was very knowledgeable and offered great suggestions for other vendors (D.J., decor, cake, etc…).
Our wedding at Lowry Park Zoo was amazing! Our coordinator Nicole worked with us every step of the way to make sure everything thing went smoothly.
We had a ceremony here in fron...
t of the giraffes and our reception in Reilly’s reserve looking out onto the Safari as well.
The added animal mingles at our cocktail hour really made our wedding day special! And the whole zoo was absolutely perfect for our wedding day portraits.
Our wedding day was perfect! Thanks to the zoo and their team.
Our journey with Lowry Park (now known as ZooTampa at Lowry Park) began rocky but turned out Beautifully. It will be a day we will forever cherish. We started our planning 2 years ...
in advance and everyone that we met with was extremely helpful in allowing us to come look at the venue and quickly returned our emails/questions. Since we planned for 2 years our coordinator through the zoo changed 3-4 times which at the time was nerve wrecking but thankfully each coordinator was diligently in writing down all our requests so the next one was able to pick up with no issue. Nicole was the coordinator who we had the longest and actually handled our wedding day and she was phenomenal! The day of the ceremony was perfect with no issues relating to the zoo. Our guests loved getting to see and take pictures with the animals during are animal mingle. I loved having the giraffes and zebras as our background! Our guests are still talking about how good our food was! (One of my biggest regrets is that I wish I had gotten more or asked to take some with me at the end of the night because it was so good!)
Our wedding was in February, with 60 guests. Lowry Park Zoo far exceeded our expectations! Nicole Morrison was easy to work with and handled all of the details with expert care. ...
The food was wonderful and our guest couldn’t stop raving about the animal mingle and giraffe feeding! I highly recommend having your wedding at Lowry Park Zoo!! A unique experience!
Getting married at the Lowry Park Zoo was the best decision we made! Our wedding guests are still raving about the venue! We worked with Nicole Morrison who was incredibly reliab...
le and accommodating. The food was wonderful and having Nicole there to coordinate everything was invaluable. The giraffe feedings and exotic animal mingle was everything we could have wished for. Thank you!!
Lowry Park Zoo was the best and easiest decision I made! The staff was so accommodating and flexible for everything that we wanted. They customized the night for us and made every...
thing absolutely perfect.
I was so pleased to hear so many wonderful things from my family member who arrived early to help set up. They glorified the staff that were there to assist with the set up and said that they made everything simple and easy. I also heard so many great things from my guests on how kind accommodating the staff was throughout the night.
The venue does not even need a review because it speaks for itself! We used Reilly's Reserve for cockatil hour and Safari Lodge for dinner and dancing. Reilly's Reserve was a beautiful room with an amazing view over the safari. The Safari Lodge was gorgeous and a great space to have plenty of room for a dance floor and seating for all of our guests.
The food was absolutley amazing and delicious. The staff did an excellent job on creating the perfect menu for us and our guests agreed!
If you want to feel like a princess on your wedding day, I highly suggest having a wedding here!
I had my wedding there in September 2017 and it was GREAT! First of all, it was just days after hurricane Irma hit so I was an insane stress bomb. Trying to finalize everything wit...
h my vendors while they were evacuated out of the state was horrible and scary but Nicole and the rest of the zoo staff helped keep me calm during the whole experience by keeping me updated and staying positive. Everything worked out thankfully. The zoo cleaned up the debris from the storm, the venue had power, and everyone was showing up! It was absolutely beautiful the day of and I got to relax in my bridal suite with champagne and great snacks until the time came to marry my wonderful husband. We took pictures with a wild serval cat and got to feed a sloth (even though he wasn’t hungry at the time). Our guests loved the experience with other exotics during cocktail hour featuring giraffes, a macaw, a snake and a few more. Everything went so smoothly I was amazed. I recommend this venue to anyone but expecially animal lovers like my husband and myself. Great pictures to last a lifetime!
We had our wedding here last week and it was beyond perfect! Nicole made it easy and kept the night flowing on schedule. The animals were perfect and the guests loved it. It was be...
autiful and they were so very helpful. What also is a big bonus for us is a majority of what we paid goes to animal conservation. 100% recommend it to anyone thinking about it.
Everything was perfect. The zoo personnel took the time to plan a perfect day for the both of us. I highly recommend them for any and all proposal/wedding needs.
We had the wedding of our dreams at the zoo and the animal encounter was worth the extra money. The food was excellent and Teri, Reagan and Dawn were fabulous to work with!
We wanted a fun wedding that meant something to us. My grandmother had loved giraffes and my fiancé's grandfather had been a zookeeper and has an elephant named after him. One of o...
ur first dates had been to the Lowry Park Zoo. We thought we had found our venue. When we showed up to look at the location the room did not match the pictures online. There were a lot of large art pieces on the wall and tribal masks that were not in any of the pictures that we saw. When I asked if it was possible to remove them Dawn got very defensive saying that she didn't understand why I would want to do that. When I told her I didn't want a safari themed wedding she bluntly said "then we're not the venue for you." I should've quit then but I still had my heart set on getting married there. We explained our story and asked again and Dawn said she would have to check with the COO and would get back to us in two weeks. We haven't heard back from her and that was almost 6 weeks ago. Clearly our money wasn't worth removing a few masks from a wall.
I couldn't be happier with my decision to have my wedding reception at the Zoo, and would highly recommended to anyone.
From the beginning I felt in good hands with the zoo's st...
aff. Mianne was great in helping us find fun ways to customize our wedding to really make it our own. We had signature cocktails, which were a huge hit with our guests, and our appetizers during the cocktails hour were AMAZING! It was a perfect time for us to incorporate some of our favorite foods. I loved that they didn't make us choose our meal and appetizer choices from a predetermined menu, but really got a feel for what we wanted. Chef CJ actually created custom menu options. Our tasting was definitely my favorite part of wedding planning, although it was tough to make decisions because everything was so delicious!
On the wedding day, I felt completely at ease and new everything was being taken care of with great attention to detail. The day went so smoothly and people can't stop telling me how amazing of a time they had at our wedding. From the food, the beautiful backdrop, and the fun animal mingles, it definitely left a lasting great memory with me, my now husband and all our guest!
I recently had my wedding ceremony and wedding reception at Lowry Park Zoo. It was 100% the best decision of our wedding. The staff is flexible,professional and trustworthy. They w...
ork with you on every single detail. Food, decorations, wedding planning etc. We were looking for a unique location and Lowry Park did just that for us. We had giraffe feeding at the cocktail hour and 3 animals come visit our guests at the receptions. Many of our guest said it was the best wedding they have ever been too. Lowry Park offered us a wedding to rememeber. I highly recommend it!
Contact
1101 W Sligh Ave, Tampa, FL
ZooTampa at Lowry Park