Sunken Gardens is four acres of tropical garden sitting a hundred years deep in the middle of St. Petersburg, and it films unlike anywhere else in the city. Labif Filmhouse has worked there, and the short version is that the light is the whole reason to book it.
George Turner Sr. bought the six acres in 1903 and drained a lake to plant them. Three generations of the Turner family built what is now a Local Historic Landmark, purchased by the City of St. Petersburg in 1999. Couples have been exchanging vows there since 1935 — this is one of the oldest continuously used wedding settings in Tampa Bay.
How it actually films
The canopy is the mechanism. Mature tropical planting scatters hard Florida sun into something soft and directional, which means midday at Sunken Gardens is workable in a way midday almost never is outdoors in Florida. That single fact opens up ceremony times most St. Petersburg venues cannot offer.
The trade is depth. Dense green reads as a wall unless frames are built with something between the camera and the couple — a pond, a path, flowering vine. The Wedding Lawn and its cascade of vines give you that. The Oak Pavilion, sheltered under the shade trees, gives you the opposite: shelter and contrast.
What to protect in the timeline
- Time to walk the paths. The gardens are not one setting, they are a dozen. Twenty unhurried minutes produces more variety here than an hour at most venues.
- Ceremony placement over ceremony time. Because the canopy does the work, where you stand matters more than when.
- Rain cover. It is an outdoor garden. In Florida, that is a plan, not a risk.
Isabel + Matthew
Filmed at Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg in April 2022. Their film is below.
Filmed at Sunken Gardens. See more of our wedding videography in St. Petersburg.