Wedding DJ at Laurel Hill West Conservatory in Bala Cynwyd, PA

The Space

Laurel Hill West Conservatory sits inside a 200-acre historic cemetery and arboretum founded in 1869 by John Jay Smith, the same man who founded the original Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia and later expanded here in Bala Cynwyd. The grounds were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, and a Gothic Revival bell tower designed by Cope and Stewardson has stood at the highest point since 1886. In the cemetery’s early years, funeral processions arrived by steamboat up the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia before the railroad later brought entourages in through the nearby Pencoyd station.

The Conservatory itself is a greenhouse, sun-filled and set apart from the rest of the property, built for events rather than burials. It pairs with an adjoining cocktail room and an outside veranda, giving a wedding a bright, glassed-in main room plus a separate space for mingling before and after dinner, distinct from the more formal chapel spaces elsewhere on the property.

Capacity & Layout

The Conservatory Greenhouse seats up to 110 guests on its own, and when paired with the adjoining cocktail room and outdoor veranda it can hold up to 100 more people across those spaces, so a couple with a guest list in the low hundreds has room to spread cocktail hour and dinner across more than one setting rather than packing everyone into a single greenhouse floor.

For a smaller ceremony, the Chapel of Peace elsewhere on the grounds holds up to 100 and offers a more traditional, indoor alternative to the greenhouse. Because the Conservatory and the Chapel are separate buildings on a 200-acre property, a couple choosing between them is really choosing between a glass-walled room full of plant light and a more conventional chapel interior.

Amenities

The grounds are an accredited arboretum with more than 9,000 trees and shrubs across over 1,000 species, so the property itself functions as landscaped scenery for photos without a couple needing to add florals to the grounds. Paved main roads make the property easy to move around on for driving, biking, wheelchairs, and strollers, useful for older guests or anyone in the wedding party who needs level ground between buildings.

Accessible parking is available at the Conservatory itself as well as at the Funeral Home and the Chapel of Peace, so guests are not walking far regardless of which building the event is in. We have worked an event in the Conservatory Greenhouse, so we know the room and how it sits relative to the veranda and cocktail room next door.

Location & Getting There

The property sits in Bala Cynwyd, just outside Philadelphia, on high ground overlooking the Schuylkill River, a site originally chosen in 1869 because Fairmount Park’s own expansion had boxed in the original cemetery in the city. That river-overlook setting is part of what made the grounds worth expanding to in the first place, and it still shapes the view from the Conservatory’s own windows today.

The Conservatory Greenhouse’s glass walls and ceiling change how sound behaves compared to a standard banquet room: glass reflects rather than absorbs, so we adjust speaker placement and levels to keep the dance floor clear without the greenhouse’s own hard, bright surfaces working against the mix, treating the glass more like an outdoor tent than a padded ballroom.