Wedding Photography at
Covington Gardens

Seven Acres of Southern Charm, Just Outside Greensboro

Tucked away in Pleasant Garden — a short drive from downtown Greensboro and an hour from Raleigh — Covington Gardens is the kind of venue that surprises visitors who expect a standard garden rental and instead encounter a fully realized estate with a genuine sense of character. The property has been welcoming weddings since 1995, when the original owners bought the land, built a Victorian-inspired home, and began hosting the celebrated gatherings that would become its legacy. The iconic tobacco barn at the entrance still greets guests as they arrive.

Today, under owner Alexis Wilhelm, Covington Gardens has been thoughtfully updated and expanded while preserving everything that made it special. More than 7 acres of lush, manicured grounds encompass five distinct event spaces — each with its own photographic personality and its own role in the natural flow of a wedding day. The ceremony at Carter Pond. Cocktail hour drifting through The Meadow. Dinner and dancing in The Garden Pavilion. Every transition feels intentional, because it was designed that way.

Covington Gardens accommodates up to 250 guests and operates with the kind of genuine hospitality that reviewers consistently describe as the venue's most defining quality — a team that is responsive, accommodating, and deeply invested in making each wedding feel like it was designed specifically for the couple it belongs to.

Covington Gardens Quick Facts

Venue rental pricing ranges from $4,000–$7,500 and includes the tent, tables, chairs, bar fronts, and setup and cleanup — eliminating the need for additional rental coordination. Peak season runs April through November, with off-peak discounts available January through March and in July, August, and December. A professional wedding planner or month-of coordinator is required. The venue requires couples to purchase day-of wedding insurance through its designated carrier.

Five Distinct Settings, One Private Estate

Covington Gardens' greatest photographic strength is the natural flow between its five spaces — each environment distinct enough to feel like a different venue entirely, but connected closely enough that the wedding day moves without friction. A gallery from Covington Gardens is almost always visually varied in a way that single-space venues can't match.

• Carter Pond

  The venue's signature ceremony location and most photographically distinctive feature — an open ceremony lawn overlooking a beautiful pond with a bubbling creek and fountain. Carter Pond accommodates up to 250 guests and serves as the natural focal point of the wedding day: the ceremony backdrop that guests remember and the portraits they return to for decades. The pond's reflective surface, the surrounding trees, and the sound of the creek and fountain create a ceremony environment that is both serene and genuinely beautiful to photograph from every angle. The fountain is particularly striking in portraits taken with the water feature as a background element.

  Up to 250 guests

• The Secret Garden

  A European-inspired manicured garden space designed for intimate ceremonies of up to 100 guests — and one of the most distinctive portrait environments on the property. The Secret Garden's structured hedgerows, curated plantings, and sense of enclosure create a completely different visual atmosphere from the open pond setting: private, architectural, and deeply romantic. For first looks, intimate ceremonies, and couple portraits that want a garden-formal rather than pastoral-open aesthetic, the Secret Garden is consistently the strongest setting on the grounds.

  Up to 100 guests

• The Meadow

  The transition space between the ceremony at Carter Pond and the reception in The Garden Pavilion — an open meadow where guests are led through a tree-lined path after the ceremony for cocktail hour. The Meadow accommodates cocktail tables, lawn games, and lounge areas, and its open, natural character provides a relaxed environment for candid guest coverage. For photographers, the tree-lined path leading into The Meadow is one of the most naturally framed portrait corridors on the property — the canopy of trees creates a soft, dappled light environment ideal for intimate couple portraits during cocktail hour.

  Cocktail hour

• The Garden Pavilion

  A 4,000-square-foot tented reception space that overlooks both Carter Pond and The Meadow — giving the reception the full benefit of the estate's outdoor character while providing weather-reliable coverage. The tent's warm ambient lighting, the views of the pond and meadow through the pavilion's open sides, and the scale of the space create a reception environment that feels simultaneously open and intimate. For photographers, the pavilion's elevated overlook of the pond at dusk produces wide-angle reception images with genuine depth and beauty — the water visible beyond the dance floor, the lights warm overhead.

  Up to 250 guests

• Hansen House & Getting-Ready Suites

  The Victorian main house — Hansen House — provides the getting-ready environment for both partners, with two dedicated suites that preserve the property's original architectural details. The bridal suite on the second floor features white walls, vintage details, a brass-framed mirror, and the iconic clawfoot tub that reviewers and photographers consistently mention as one of the most photographically distinctive getting-ready elements at any Greensboro-area venue. The house exterior, fountain, and surrounding grounds also serve as portrait backdrops throughout the day.

  Two dedicated suites

Why Photographers Love This Venue

Covington Gardens is exceptional for wedding photography because it was designed around beauty rather than logistics — and that design priority shows in every corner of the property. The pond's reflective surface adds natural depth to ceremony images. The Secret Garden's structured enclosure creates intimate framing without any backdrop decoration. The Meadow's tree-lined path diffuses and softens midday light. The Hansen House clawfoot tub creates an instantly distinctive bridal portrait environment that doesn't require any styling to look extraordinary.

The five-space layout also creates a natural photographic arc across the wedding day — each environment producing genuinely different imagery, so the final gallery has a range and visual depth that single-room or single-space venues cannot achieve. A Covington Gardens gallery almost always contains ceremony images at the pond, intimate portraits in the Secret Garden, golden hour shots in the Meadow, and warm tented reception coverage — four completely different visual environments from a single property.

Carter Pond at golden hour deserves specific mention. As the late-afternoon light drops behind the surrounding trees, the pond's surface catches the warm sky and the fountain catches the light in a way that creates portrait images with a soft, reflective quality unlike anything achievable at a standard outdoor venue. This is consistently the portrait priority at every Covington Gardens wedding we photograph.

Best Photo Spots by Time of Day

Covington Gardens' five distinct spaces give us an exceptional range of portrait and documentary environments throughout the day. Here's how we structure coverage at this venue:

Carter Pond at golden hour is the portrait session we protect in every Covington Gardens timeline. The combination of the reflective water surface, the fountain catching the warm light, and the surrounding mature trees creating a natural frame produces images that consistently become the most-shared from the entire day. We schedule 20 minutes at the pond during cocktail hour and treat it as a non-negotiable anchor of the timeline.

Brian Anthony Photography at Covington Gardens

Garden venues with multiple distinct spaces reward photographers who understand how to move between environments efficiently while staying present for every key moment. Covington Gardens' layout — five spaces connected by tree-lined paths across a compact, walkable 7-acre property — makes this kind of efficient, coverage-rich approach natural rather than effortful. The spaces are close enough that nothing is ever far away, but distinct enough that each environment feels genuinely separate.

With over 1,000 weddings photographed and filmed, our approach is rooted in documentary storytelling — capturing authentic moments as they naturally unfold while building the intentional portrait work that takes full advantage of what the venue offers. At Covington Gardens, that means using the Secret Garden for the first look, protecting Carter Pond during golden hour, and letting the Garden Pavilion's warm light and pond views anchor evening reception coverage.

For couples getting married at Covington Gardens, we build a custom wedding day timeline around the venue's five spaces, the seasonal light conditions, and your guest count — so you experience every beautiful corner of the estate without feeling rushed through any of it.

View our full wedding photography gallery →

Photography & Video Packages for Your Venue

We offer a full range of collections to fit your vision and budget. All packages include two photographers, an online gallery, full retouching, and printing rights. Combined photo + video packages add two videographers, drone footage, and cinematic films — including aerial coverage of Carter Pond, the Secret Garden, and the broader Covington Gardens estate from above.

View all wedding photo + video packages →
View photography-only collections →

Location, Access & Guest Logistics

Covington Gardens' location in Pleasant Garden — just outside Greensboro's southern edge — gives it the private, secluded character of a countryside estate while keeping it easily accessible for guests from across the Triad and beyond.

Location: 7119 Racine Road, Pleasant Garden, NC 27313 — minutes from downtown Greensboro, approximately one hour from downtown Raleigh.

What's included: Tent, tables, chairs, bar fronts, setup, and cleanup are all included with venue rental. The on-site venue host manages facilities throughout the day. A separate wedding planner or month-of coordinator is required and must be a professional in the industry.

Rehearsal dinners: Covington Gardens is equipped to host rehearsal dinners on-site. A Thursday evening check-in option allows the wedding party to rehearse, host the rehearsal dinner, and begin décor setup — all in one visit before the wedding day.

Hotels: The nearest hotels are located in downtown Greensboro approximately 20 minutes away, including the Marriott Downtown, Hyatt Place Greensboro, and Hampton Inn & Suites. The Grandover Resort & Spa is also 20 minutes away. Burlington and Asheboro hotels are within 30 minutes.

Drone photography & videography: Carter Pond, the Garden Pavilion, and the surrounding Pleasant Garden countryside are outstanding from above. Aerial footage of the estate's five-space layout and pond setting communicates the full scope of the property in a way no ground-level image can replicate. All photo + video packages include drone videography.

To book a tour or inquire about availability, visit covingtongardens.com, call 336-209-0460, or email covingtongardensnc@gmail.com.