City venue guide

The 10 best wedding venues in Aspen

Aspen weddings concentrate in a few square miles: the historic hotels downtown — Hotel Jerome, The St. Regis Aspen and The Little Nell — plus the modernist Aspen Institute campus at Aspen Meadows Resort in the West End. The mountain sites are the other half of the market, reached by gondola to the Wedding Deck at 11,212 feet or by road up the valleys to T-Lazy-7 Ranch and Pine Creek Cookhouse. Smaller ceremonies go to Aspen Chapel or the rooftop of the Aspen Art Museum. Almost everything sits within fifteen minutes of Main Street, which is why the town suits weekend-long weddings rather than single afternoons.

Researched and last reviewed 2026-08-17. We have no commercial relationship with any venue listed.

Aspen, Colorado — where couples marry — Aspen · Photo: Doug Dolde at English Wikipedia · Public domain

No. IHotel Jerome, Auberge Resorts Collection

No. I

Hotel Jerome, Auberge Resorts Collection

Historic hotelEast Main Street, downtown AspenUp to 300 guests

Jerome B. Wheeler opened the hotel in 1889 on silver-mine money, and the brick building has held its corner of Main Street through every boom and bust since. The 3,450 sq ft Grand Ballroom is one of only two above-ground ballrooms in Aspen, with floor-to-ceiling windows onto the Elk Mountain Range and Red Mountain. Most couples chain it with the Garden for the ceremony and Bad Harriet, the bar downstairs, for the late half of the night. The draw is logistical as much as architectural — the whole weekend runs from one front door in the middle of town.

Silver-boom landmark on Main Street

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The Little Nell — wedding venue in Aspen, Colorado

Photo: Hoffman, Ron, Photographer ( NARA record: 8464743 ) · Public domain

No. II

The Little Nell

Luxury hotel with mountaintop venueBase of the Silver Queen Gondola, AspenUp to 250 on the Wedding Deck; 250 seated at the Sundeck

What couples book here is really two addresses joined by the Silver Queen Gondola. The hotel occupies the gondola base in town; the Wedding Deck sits at the summit, 11,212 feet up, open to the Elk Mountains and Highlands Bowl, and holds 250. Receptions move indoors at the same elevation — the Sundeck seats 250 under 30-foot ceilings and a rock fireplace, or the smaller Aspen Mountain Club. The deck is an open platform above treeline, so it runs summer and early fall only; winter and spring couples are routed to the Wedding Overlook instead, which caps at 200.

Ceremony at 11,212 feet by gondola

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Aspen Meadows Resort — wedding venue in Aspen, Colorado

Photo: U.S. Department of State from United States · Public domain

No. III

Aspen Meadows Resort

Modernist campus resortWest End, AspenUp to 300 outdoors at Anderson Park; 300 seated in the McNul

Built as the home of the Aspen Institute, the campus still reads that way — low Bauhaus buildings laid out by Herbert Bayer across 40 acres in the West End rather than log and antler. Anderson Park takes ceremonies of up to 300 with the Maroon and Castle Creek valleys behind it, while the 4,235 sq ft McNulty Ballroom is glazed floor to ceiling and seats 300, the second of Aspen's two above-ground ballrooms. Bass Terrace, a patio above the Roaring Fork, handles 150 for a cocktail hour. This is where couples land who came to Colorado but did not come for a ski lodge.

Bauhaus lines on the Aspen Institute campus

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The St. Regis Aspen Resort — wedding venue in Aspen, Colorado

Photo: This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder . Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author and send me a message . This image is not in the publ · CC BY-SA 3.0

No. IV

The St. Regis Aspen Resort

Grand hotel ballroomEast Dean Street, downtown AspenUp to 600 seated in the Grand Astor Ballroom; 800 across the

Scale is the argument here. At 9,146 sq ft the Grand Astor Ballroom is the largest single event room in Aspen, which makes this the default once a guest list passes the point where other properties start splitting the party between rooms. The Fountain Courtyard — an enclosed terrace at the centre of the resort with Aspen Mountain rising directly behind it — is used for ceremonies in every season, winter included, and the Mountain Plaza accounts for most of the remaining 9,755 sq ft of outdoor space. The property came out of a full renovation in 2023.

Aspen's largest ballroom

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Aspen Art Museum — wedding venue in Aspen, Colorado

Photo: Bkthomson16 · CC BY-SA 4.0

No. V

Aspen Art Museum

Contemporary art museumEast Hyman Avenue, downtown AspenUp to 100 seated in summer, 85 in winter; 250 standing

Shigeru Ban's woven-timber building on the corner of Spring and Hyman puts its event space on Level 3, at the very top. Sliding glass walls open the room onto the Roof Deck Sculpture Garden, where ceremonies are held, with Ajax, Red Mountain and Independence Pass filling the sightlines. Three house rules shape the plan: the museum takes at most one wedding a month, every drink has to be bought through its own liquor licence, and the town noise ordinance ends proceedings at 9pm with vendor load-out done by 10. Treat it as a ceremony-and-dinner venue and book the after-party elsewhere.

Shigeru Ban rooftop, one wedding a month

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No. VIW Aspen

No. VI

W Aspen

Modern hotel with rooftopSouth Spring Street, base of Aspen MountainUp to 250 guests

Newer than almost anything else in town and deliberately unrustic. The WET Deck is a heated rooftop pool terrace of about 5,300 sq ft that takes ceremonies and cocktail hours for a little over 200, with the mountain immediately overhead; 39 Degrees and its terrace absorb a seated reception of up to 250. Roughly 15,000 sq ft of indoor and outdoor space in total, plus Hidalgo, the nightlife room, for the part of the evening nobody photographs.

Heated rooftop pool deck at the mountain base

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T-Lazy-7 Ranch — wedding venue in Aspen, Colorado

Photo: T-Lazy Seven Ranch Corp. · CC BY-SA 4.0

No. VII

T-Lazy-7 Ranch

Working ranchMaroon Creek Road, west of AspenUp to 500 seated at the Main Meadow

Twelve minutes up Maroon Creek Road toward the Bells, on land backing onto White River National Forest. Four sites, each priced separately and published openly: the Main Meadow, where tented receptions go up beneath the fourteen-thousand-foot Pyramid Peak and seat as many as 500, at $15,000 plus $5,000 a day for setup and teardown on a two-day minimum; the Event Lodge at $8,000–$9,500 for a reception; the Chuckwagon grounds at $6,000–$7,000; and the Mountain Meadow, which is a ceremony site rather than a reception one. Pricing this transparent is rare in Aspen and lets you model the day before you ever tour.

Tented meadow beneath Pyramid Peak

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Pine Creek Cookhouse — wedding venue in Aspen, Colorado

Photo: Troendle, Charles A Kaufmann, Merrill R Hamre, R. H Winokur, Robert P Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station (Fort Collins, Colo.) Society of Americ · Public domain

No. VIII

Pine Creek Cookhouse

Backcountry restaurantCastle Creek Valley, near AshcroftUp to 160 seated; 250 with a tent

A log restaurant up the Castle Creek valley past the Ashcroft ghost town, ringed by 13,500-foot peaks. Dinner runs to about 140 inside, or up to 250 once a tent goes up alongside. The ceremony site is a four-hundred-yard walk from the door, aspen on one flank and wetland on the other. Access is the deciding factor: cars pull up to the front in summer and fall, but winter guests arrive by horse-drawn sleigh or on cross-country skis, which is either exactly why you book it or exactly why you don't.

Winter arrivals by horse-drawn sleigh

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No. IXCloud Nine Alpine Bistro

No. IX

Cloud Nine Alpine Bistro

Alpine bistroAspen Highlands, top of the Cloud Nine liftUp to 54 guests

A chalet-style restaurant at the top of the Cloud Nine lift on Aspen Highlands, facing the Maroon Bells and Pyramid Peak head-on, with guests carried up by snowcat. It caps at 54 and takes private bookings in winter only, so the realistic use is a rehearsal dinner, a welcome night or a very small ceremony rather than a full reception. Catering runs through the resort's own team, which does fondue and raclette rather than plated hotel food. Couples pairing it with a larger venue in town generally put this on the Friday.

Snowcat access, 54 seats, winter only

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No. XAspen Chapel

No. X

Aspen Chapel

Non-denominational chapelMeadowood Drive, at the Aspen roundaboutUp to 250 in the sanctuary; 35 in the garden

For couples who want an actual ceremony building rather than a hotel lawn, this is the option in Aspen. The 2,500 sq ft sanctuary has hardwood floors, movable chairs and mouth-blown stained glass by Jean-Jacques Duval, along with a 24-rank Moeller pipe organ and a seven-foot Baldwin grand; the garden outside seats up to 35. Rates are published and modest by local standards — $950 for an elopement, $2,500 up to 50 guests, $4,200 at the full 250 — and the chapel welcomes outside officiants as readily as its own resident minister. Parking for more than 50 cars is not a trivial detail in this town.

Duval stained glass, outside officiants welcome

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Marrying in Aspen?

Want an invitation designed for your venue?

Tell us where you’re marrying in Aspen, Coloradoand we’ll build the invitation around it — the venue’s own colours, an illustration of the building if you want one, your map and timings already in place. One link for every guest, with live RSVPs.

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Planning a wedding in Aspen

The Maroon Bells are the picture most couples arrive with, but you cannot simply hold a ceremony there. The amphitheater by Maroon Lake is the only sanctioned ceremony site, it needs a Forest Service special-use permit from the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, and the group cap and permitted days are restrictive enough that the permit usually dictates the date — confirm the current fee and terms with the district before anything is printed. Every guest additionally needs a shuttle seat or a vehicle reservation, booked through Recreation.gov, to travel up Maroon Creek Road. Getting people into town is the other constraint: Aspen-Pitkin County Airport sits in a narrow valley at 7,820 feet and cancels for low cloud and wind far more often than most US airports. From roughly mid-November until Memorial Day weekend, Independence Pass is gated shut for the winter, which turns the drive from Denver into a longer route via I-70 and Glenwood Springs, so build a buffer day into the schedule and ask guests to fly in early.

When to marry — Late June through September is the working season: July and August bring warm afternoons broken by short monsoon thunderstorms, while September is the driest month of the year and coincides with the aspens turning gold, which is why its Saturdays go first.
What it costs — Published figures give a fair sense of the spread. Aspen Chapel rents from $950 for an elopement to $4,200 at full capacity. T-Lazy-7 Ranch posts its site fees space by space — roughly $6,000–$7,000 for the Chuckwagon grounds, $8,000–$9,500 for the Event Lodge, and $15,000 for the Main Meadow plus $5,000 a day for setup and teardown on a two-day minimum. The luxury hotels work on food-and-beverage minimums instead, which commonly begin around $20,000. Planner estimates put a 50–100 guest Aspen wedding near $38,000–$46,000 all in, and a 150–200 guest one at $60,000–$75,000.

Once the venue is settled, the next thing most couples deal with is telling everyone. A digital wedding invitation carries the address, a map, your timings and a live RSVP on one link — which matters more than usual when guests are travelling to Aspen and need directions, and plenty of notice.

Questions

Marrying in Aspen: your questions.

What do non-residents need in order to marry legally in Aspen?

Colorado imposes no residency requirement, no waiting period and no blood test. Both parties apply in person at the Pitkin County Clerk & Recorder on East Main Street with valid photo ID — a passport is fine for overseas couples — and the license costs $30; travelers should book an appointment, and the county asks that you apply no more than about a month before the ceremony because the license has a short validity window. Colorado is one of the few states permitting self-solemnization, so you can legally marry each other with no officiant and no witnesses, and the result is a full civil marriage recognized across the United States — no separate American civil ceremony is needed. Whether your home country accepts it is a different question: most do once the certificate is apostilled, but confirm with your own consulate before assuming you can skip a civil formality at home.

How far in advance do Aspen venues need to be booked?

Twelve to eighteen months is the standard guidance for a summer Saturday, and the binding constraint is usually lodging rather than the venue itself — the town has a finite room count and the Aspen Music Festival fills it from late June into August. If the Maroon Bells amphitheater is part of the plan, the Forest Service special-use permit is the harder of the two bookings: the group cap is small and the permitted days are limited, so the permit tends to set your date rather than follow it. Apply as early as the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District will take you. Winter dates at the on-mountain venues also compete with ski-season demand.

Can we actually get married on top of Aspen Mountain?

Yes. The Wedding Deck at the summit, 11,212 feet up, is operated by The Little Nell and holds as many as 250, with guests riding the Silver Queen Gondola from the hotel's own door at the base. Because the deck is an open-air platform above treeline it is a summer and early-autumn venue; receptions then move indoors at the same elevation, to the Sundeck or the Aspen Mountain Club. For a winter or spring date the equivalent is the Wedding Overlook, which takes up to 200.

Will the altitude be a problem for guests?

Aspen sits at roughly 7,900 feet and the mountaintop venues clear 11,000, which is high enough that people arriving from sea level feel it. Give guests a full day in town before the wedding rather than routing them from the airport straight to a ceremony, and plan on alcohol landing harder than it would at home — worth a line on the welcome card and worth factoring into the bar count. Water stations at outdoor ceremonies are standard practice here for good reason, and anyone with a heart or lung condition should speak to their doctor before booking.

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Marrying in Aspen?

Want an invitation designed for your venue?

Make ours for Aspen See the designs

The 10 best wedding venues in Aspen

Researched and last reviewed 2026-08-17. We have no commercial relationship with any venue listed.

Planning a wedding in Aspen

When to marry — Late June through September is the working season: July and August bring warm afternoons broken by short monsoon thunderstorms, while September is the driest month of the year and coincides with the aspens turning gold, which is why its Saturdays go first.

What it costs — Published figures give a fair sense of the spread. Aspen Chapel rents from $950 for an elopement to $4,200 at full capacity. T-Lazy-7 Ranch posts its site fees space by space — roughly $6,000–$7,000 for the Chuckwagon grounds, $8,000–$9,500 for the Event Lodge, and $15,000 for the Main Meadow plus $5,000 a day for setup and teardown on a two-day minimum. The luxury hotels work on food-and-beverage minimums instead, which commonly begin around $20,000. Planner estimates put a 50–100 guest Aspen wedding near $38,000–$46,000 all in, and a 150–200 guest one at $60,000–$75,000.