Andaz Scottsdale Resort and Bungalows sits on 23 acres off North Scottsdale Road, close enough to Old Town to be convenient and far enough back to feel private. The resort calls itself a luxury retreat with an artistic soul. That is marketing language, but the midcentury bungalow layout behind it is real, and it changes how a wedding day moves through the property. You are not working in one building with a lawn attached. You are working across a small neighborhood.
We have worked weddings on this property and attended a networking event here for The Collective by Confetti Studio. That is enough time here to have opinions about the light, and enough to have watched the same problem come up more than once.
This guide covers the four lawns, what the resort publishes and where it contradicts itself, and the one thing about this venue that will affect every guest you invite.
The four lawns, and which one you actually want
Andaz publishes four outdoor ceremony spaces plus a pool deck and a ballroom.
Albers Lawn is the one we would pick, and it is the lawn in most of the photographs on this page. It is the big circular lawn, and it is the space that holds both the ceremony and the reception on the same day. It is also the space at the center of a problem we will come back to in a moment.
Cholla Lawn is the largest by published capacity, surrounded by cacti and orange trees, with the desert planting doing more of the visual work than the mountain does.
Sonoran Lawn is the smaller one tucked in among the bungalows and shaded by pine trees. It is the most intimate space on the property and, worth noting given everything below, the one with real mature tree cover.
Studio Lawn the resort describes as lit to dramatic effect in the evenings, which makes it a stronger reception space than a ceremony space if your timeline runs late.
Your ceremony backdrop is something you build
Andaz describes Albers Lawn as having unobstructed views of Camelback Mountain. The view exists. It is just not necessarily what your ceremony faces.
Look at the photograph above. The chairs face a floral installation, and behind that installation is a hedge line screening the neighboring properties. The hedge is doing real work there, and so is the florist. At Albers, the backdrop is something you build rather than something the venue hands you.
That is not a criticism of the lawn. It is a budget line and a planning decision, and it is worth knowing before you fall in love with a photograph of the mountain. Ask which way the aisle points, go stand in that spot, and look at what is actually behind the officiant.
A conflict on their own website worth knowing before you sign
Here is something no other guide to this venue mentions.
Andaz publishes Albers Lawn at 14,000 square feet on their own website, describing it as three connecting lawns with unobstructed views of Camelback Mountain. On Hyatt’s page for the same property, Albers Lawn is listed at 204 square meters, which is about 2,200 square feet, with a capacity of 200.
That is a six fold difference between two pages published by the same company about the same lawn.
Both numbers can be true in a sense. The larger figure probably counts all three connecting lawns together, and the smaller one probably counts the single lawn a ceremony is actually set on. Nobody tells you which one your contract is buying.
What to do about it. On your site visit, walk the space with your planner and get the usable ceremony footprint in writing, along with a seated guest count for that specific footprint. Do not size a guest list against a square footage you read on a website.
The Knot makes this worse rather than better. Their listing claims the property has 5,000 square feet of outdoor space. The resort’s own four lawns add up to close to 30,000. Treat the directory numbers here as decoration.
There is in fact a third number, and it is the one to use. Andaz also publishes a capacity chart that gives seated counts rather than square footage or maximums, and on that chart Albers Lawn is 110 seated. So the same lawn appears three ways in the resort’s own material: 14,000 square feet on their website, about 2,200 square feet and 200 guests on Hyatt’s page, and 110 seated on the chart.
The 110 is the one we would plan against. Count the chairs in the first photograph on this page and you land right about there. It is also the only one of the three that describes what actually happens on a ceremony lawn, which is people sitting down.
Published capacities
From the resort’s own capacity chart. These are seated counts, which is what you want when you are sizing a wedding:
- Cholla Lawn: 300 seated
- Andaz Studio Lawn: 250 seated, and it combines with the indoor Studio for up to 500 at a reception
- Foundry Ballroom: 220 seated
- Turquoise Pool Deck: 200
- Andaz Studio: 130 seated
- Albers Lawn: 110 seated
- The Grove: 30
- Organic Garden: 20
Square footage from the resort’s own wedding spaces page, where it differs: Albers 14,000, Cholla 7,000, Studio Lawn 5,500, Foundry Ballroom 3,800, Sonoran Lawn 3,250.
Hyatt’s event space page gives a larger set for the same rooms: Cholla 400, Turquoise Pool Deck 300, Foundry 240, Albers 200, Studio Lawn 180. Those read as maximums or standing figures rather than seated ones. Where the two disagree, the seated numbers are the ones that describe a wedding, and the two smallest spaces on the chart, The Grove at 30 and the Organic Garden at 20, are genuinely tiny ceremony sites and rare on a property this size.
The drawback: there is almost no shade
This is the thing we would want to know before booking, and it is the thing the photographs usually do not show you.
There is very little shade at Andaz. There are a few trees around Albers Lawn and a few palms near where cocktail hour lands, but most of your day will be spent in direct sun unless someone brings in a tent, or a stage with drapery, to cast shade over the ceremony, the cocktail hour or the reception.
We were there in March and getting hot. The photographers and the content creator working alongside us were visibly flushed. It was a beautiful ceremony and a beautiful flip to reception, and it was still hot enough to be uncomfortable in what is supposed to be the easy month.
That matters most for the guests who cannot move out of it. Older family, anyone frail, anyone in a heavy suit. A ceremony is thirty minutes of sitting still facing one direction, and if that direction is into the sun there is nowhere to go.
One nuance in the venue’s favor. The exposure problem is a ceremony and cocktail hour problem, not a whole day problem. A reception on the lawn after sunset is a completely different experience, and the property is genuinely beautiful once the lanterns are lit. If your ceremony sits late enough in the afternoon and dinner lands after the sun is down, you shrink the exposed window to about ninety minutes. That is a timeline decision, and it is worth making it deliberately rather than discovering it.
The planners who handle this well plan for it in advance. Umbrellas or fans handed out before the ceremony, so guests have shade and airflow from the moment they sit down. The failure mode is running short. If you are going to do this, count for everyone who might want one, not for the number you think will ask.
Two practical follow ons. Sonoran Lawn is the one space on the property with real tree cover, so if a smaller guest count works for you it solves the problem structurally rather than with accessories. And if you are already having the tent conversation for shade, have the rain conversation in the same meeting, because it is the same vendor and the same load in.
No published rain plan
Andaz publishes no rain policy that we can find, on either of their sites. That is not unusual in Scottsdale, where the Four Seasons at Troon North is the only property we have found that puts one in writing, but it does mean the answer lives in a conversation rather than in a document.
Ask what happens to your specific lawn at what forecast, who makes that call, how many hours before the ceremony it gets made, and what the backup space is. Then ask whether the backup is guaranteed or subject to availability, because those are very different promises.
One lawn, three states, one day
The most common shape we have seen at Andaz is a ceremony on the lawn, cocktail hour immediately adjacent, and then the same lawn flipped into the reception while guests are a few steps away with a drink in hand.
That is exactly what happened at the wedding in these photographs. Ceremony on Albers, cocktail hour near the pool, and then back onto the same grass for dinner once the sun was down.
It works, and it keeps everybody on the property instead of walking them somewhere. Two things to plan around.
Whatever you do to shade or dress the ceremony space is also part of what your guests are looking at from cocktail hour while it is being torn down and rebuilt. And there is no reveal moment. Guests do not walk into a room they have not seen. Some couples do not care about that at all. If you do care, ask about holding the ceremony on one lawn and the reception on another, which the property has the space to do.
Indoors
The Foundry Ballroom is 3,800 square feet and seats 220 on the resort’s capacity chart, and it comes with a large shaded terrace that is the natural cocktail hour if you are going indoors. The resort describes it as a neutral canvas, which is fair. It does not fight your design.
If your plan involves an indoor reception, or an indoor space as the rain backup, get the room named in your contract rather than a capacity quoted at you on a tour. Indoor and outdoor are different bookings here, and you want to know which one you are holding.
Where to shoot
The desert planting on the property is the best thing here for portraits, and it is at its best in the last hour of light. Sun angle does what the trees do not, and the cactus and rock read beautifully when they are lit from the side rather than from overhead. If you want desert portraits, protect that window in the timeline before you agree to anything else.
Albers Lawn with Camelback off to one side is the frame people picture when they picture this venue, and it is worth the walk. Sonoran and the bungalow paths are the fallback when the light is high and hard, because the pines give you something to work with.
What it costs
Andaz does not publish wedding pricing on either of their websites.
The Knot lists a starting price of $35,000 with couples typically spending around $42,000, a $4,000 ceremony fee, a $4,000 reception fee and bar service from $60 per person. Those are directory figures rather than the resort’s own, they carry no date, and the size claim on that same listing is wrong by a factor of six, so treat them as a rough order of magnitude and nothing more.
The real number comes from a proposal with your date and your guest count on it. Ask for the food and beverage minimum by day of week, since Saturday is usually a different business from Friday and Sunday.
Five questions to ask on the tour
- Which lawn is in my contract by name, and what is the usable ceremony footprint of that lawn in square feet?
- What is the shade plan for the ceremony and the cocktail hour, and what does a tent or drapery cost through your preferred vendor?
- What is the rain call, who makes it, how many hours out, and is the backup space guaranteed or subject to availability?
- If we flip the ceremony space into the reception, where exactly do guests spend cocktail hour and what do they see?
- What is the food and beverage minimum for our date, and what is the ceremony fee on top of it?
The details are worth the drone
The circular shape of Albers is not just a nice detail, it is a gift to anyone shooting from above. A round lawn wants a round layout, and a round layout read from directly overhead is a frame you simply cannot get in a ballroom. If you are hiring a videographer or a photographer with a drone, this is a property where that investment pays for itself in one shot.
The short version
Andaz is a beautiful property, and the design of it rewards a film. Bungalows, mountain, midcentury lines, real art on the walls. The lawns photograph as well as anything in the valley.
Go in knowing two things and you will have a very good day here. Get your lawn named and measured in writing, because the resort’s own websites disagree about it. And plan the shade before you plan anything else, because it is the one thing about this venue that will affect every guest you invite.
Planning a wedding at Andaz Scottsdale?
We shoot photo and video for weddings across Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, and we have worked weddings at this property. Have a look at our wedding films and our photography, see what it costs to work with us, and get in touch if your date is still open.
Andaz is one of the properties in our guide to Scottsdale wedding venues. If you are also looking at Paradise Valley, we have a full guide to weddings at Mountain Shadows Resort.
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