At the 2025 ABIA Wedding Awards, couples named Marnong Estate Victoria’s best wedding reception venue. Stand at the windows of The Angliss at sunset and the reason is in front of you.

Published 5 September 2025

On a Sunday afternoon in February, under the timber-and-glass roof of The Green Grove, a bride and groom walked back up the aisle through a storm of white confetti. Their guests were on their feet. Somebody near the front was still throwing.

Not long after, the photographer found them alone in the arched hallway of The Homestead, the estate’s heritage house, before the night properly began.

That night, the one between the vows and the last song, is the part of a wedding Marnong Estate has built itself around. In 2025, the couples who spent theirs here said it does it better than anyone in the state.

Marnong Estate, a Melbourne wedding reception venue spread across 1,200 acres of vines and pasture in Mickleham, took out the Wedding Reception Venue category at the 2025 Victorian ABIA Wedding Awards. It was also a finalist for Ceremony Venue and for Function Coordinator.

The trophy was handed over on 2 September 2025, at the Victorian ABIA Wedding Awards night. The gold lettering on the black glass says it plainly: Wedding Reception Venue. Winner. Victoria. Marnong Estate.

The Australian Bridal Industry Academy decides these awards on couples’ own verdicts. Every business is independently rated and reviewed by couples married in the previous 12 months, and ABIA says those it recognises scored above 95 per cent. Nobody tours the venue with a clipboard. A category is won the slow way, one Saturday at a time, across a whole season of weddings.

Read the reviews behind this one and the same words keep coming back. “We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect wedding reception venue,” wrote Huimin and Joe. Naomi and Josh were sold before they had seen anywhere else: “After visiting just one venue, we knew it was the perfect fit.”

That makes the reception the hardest category of all to win. A ceremony lasts 20 minutes. A reception lasts five or six hours, and every one of them is on show: the welcome, the timing of the entrées, the speeches, the moment the dance floor opens, the last drink. Guests forget the order of service. They remember the night.

The room that won it

The room that carried the vote is The Angliss, the first-floor heart of this Melbourne wedding reception venue. In July, for the estate’s winter wedding showcase, it was dressed the way couples tend to picture it: chandeliers over the dance floor, fabric swagged across the ceiling, candles in tall glass running down the tables.

None of it competes with the far wall. The glass there runs floor to ceiling, and beyond it the paddocks fall away toward the Macedon Ranges. Most reception rooms have to be decorated into feeling special. This one comes with a horizon.

Two hundred guests can sit down to dinner, or 300 can stand. And an Angliss booking brings the wedding party something a hotel ballroom cannot: The Homestead, the heritage house with its four suites and arched hallways, for their own use. The couple dresses there, slips out for photographs on the estate, and comes back to the same rooms at the end of the night.

Three rooms, three kinds of night

Not every couple wants the big room. The Woolshed suits a party that wants timber, warmth and a dance floor close to the tables; it seats 110 and fits 200 on their feet. The Green Grove, where that February ceremony was held, turns from ceremony to dinner for 80, or 120 standing. Between the three, this Melbourne wedding reception venue can host an intimate dinner or a celebration for 300.

What reaches the table

Ask guests what they remember about a reception and the food comes second only to the speeches. Marnong treats that seriously. Every wedding menu comes from the kitchen of events chef Natalia Arisa, and the estate also runs La Vètta, a restaurant holding a hat in The Age Good Food Guide, and the bottles on the reception tables come from Marnong’s own Sunbury-region vineyard.

Kira and Patrick put it best. The food, they wrote, was “not just ‘good for a wedding’, it was genuinely amazing.”

Before the first course

Couples also put Marnong among the state’s finalists for Ceremony Venue. Every ceremony space comes set with 50 chairs. The open-air Secret Garden takes up to 200 guests, 150 of them standing. The Green Grove takes 150, and the Lookout Marquee, looking toward the ranges, takes 100.

The people who make it run

The Function Coordinator nomination is the quiet one. It belongs to the people who answer the 11pm email about table numbers, who know which aunt cannot sit near which uncle, and who have already moved the canapés inside when the forecast turns. Even the most beautiful Melbourne wedding reception venue can fall apart on the night. Couples noticed that this one did not. Lauren and Matthew wrote that the staff “accommodated to our needs in the day and eased any stress.”

At Marnong those people have names. Anna Reza manages sales and events, and events chef Natalia Arisa runs the wedding kitchen. Senior wedding and events coordinator Carleen Wickham leads the coordination team.

Where the night ends

At this Melbourne wedding reception venue, last drinks do not mean a long drive. Alongside The Homestead, ten vineyard cabins, two bedrooms and an ensuite in every one, give family and friends 20 rooms on the estate. Melbourne Airport is a 15-minute trip for anyone flying in.

The ceremony took 20 minutes. The reception took the rest of the night. In 2025, Victoria’s couples decided nobody does that part better.

To every couple who chose Marnong in 2025 and then took the time to tell ABIA about it: thank you. And to Anna, Natalia, Carleen and the events, kitchen and floor teams who earned it, well done. — Marnong Estate