Of all the “firsts” one may hear they need to do to start planning a wedding, for me I first had to decide on my venue. This was made difficult be the lack of a decision on a location. As mentioned before, a local wedding was out. We tried and my stars would simply not align for this to work. We began to consider a destination wedding, the destination being the most beautiful beaches in the contiguous United States. The Florida Keys are the destination of consideration, and they are magnificent. They offer some incredible Gulf sunsets, Scuba diving, fishing, other water sports, and endless entertainment for nature lovers. The local, laid back atmosphere leaves nothing to be desired. And in contrast to some other blue water beaches, you can drive to these (or hop on an inexpensive flight to Fort Lauderdale or Miami)!
Freesia Dude and I actually spent the week following our engagement in the Florida Keys. We took a road trip and stayed in Key Largo, Islamorada, Key West, and Bahia Honda Park. We contacted a wedding coordinator (Keys Dream Weddings) to begin helping us with the unknown world of destination wedding planning. Immediately she directed us towards two venues, a small hotel called Coconut Palm Inn, and a beautiful private residence. Initially, we were drawn to the residence due to the unique location and that it has some of the most beautiful landscaping in Florida (truly, it is award winning!). However, it slowly became apparent that this would not work within our budget and our eyes turned to Coconut Palm Inn…
My sister got married two years, almost to the day, before Freesia Dude proposed. She and I are rather close in age and in friendship. I was her MOH and she is mine. The day she got engaged was the day that I started paying attention to all those details at weddings that one does not usually consider. From my point of view, she handled the whole process like a champ. She had every bit of it under control and turned out an amazing wedding that totally encompassed the personalities of her and her new husband. It took around a year to plan her fairly sizable wedding. During her planning, I decided that if when my day came I would do a destination wedding and if not, it would be small and simple and DEFINITELY not take longer than a few months to plan.
One of the first questions I was asked after becoming engaged was whether I would have a destination wedding. Immediately I said no, I would miss out on several things that I will only get to have one chance at. I had set in my mind that I would plan a wedding on the Texas beaches that Freesia Dude and I both grew up on.
I dreamed of a ceremony on the beach at sunset, in front of a beach house that would hold the reception. A small number, around 50 or so of our closest friends and family, would make a fabulous, yet not overwhelming, party. After all, socializing does make me tired! (My apologies, this is a small joke from my family that originated during my brother’s engagement to my now sister-in-law. After attending a couple of wedding preparation events, I returned home exhausted and explained that “socializing makes me tired”, it has stuck ever since.) So a quaint wedding on the beach had my name all over it….until I began to consider who those “50-ish guests” would be, and where there was a beach house on the Texas coast that did not have a septic system that would be massively overloaded by 50 people! (again, my apologies, this time for the unsettling example)
Freesia Dude and I began looking between Galveston and Surfside Beach. This land is not within city limits, allowing us to hold fireworks which would be nice as we were hoping to have a July 4th wedding (this will be our 5th “dating-anniversary”). Also, it is less crowded, but has fewer homes. While searching we found a couple houses that looked like they might work, so we took a Saturday drive to the beach to take a look. The first house we drove to was filled with quite a buzz and, judging by the white tulle draped on the railings, we suspected they were setting up a wedding!
Now I might be jumping the gun a little bit here because I know I will have a long(er) engagement if I want to wait for a warm-weather wedding (think Summer 2012) – but is it bad that even though I don’t want to enter a knee-deep plethora of excel sheets at this moment – I want to have a date and venue ASAP?
I guess I am just so excited for the planning process and once there is a date, it makes it feel more “official”.
This may be a little extreme, but funny to say the least
Inspired by Magnolia Bud’s post about her ceremony venue, I wanted to share with you where we will become man and wife. A bit of background. It was only a short time ago that we learned that we would be able to get married where I dreamed of having the ceremony. We themed our wedding around this location and believe me, I’ve already thought of the pictures! There were some political changes and the like so we had to wait to get confirmation on the site.
Without further ado, here is where we will exchange our vows.
The building which my reception will be in is quite frankly, the shell of a building. Getting married in rural Nebraska has presented us with some challenges, one of the biggest being venue (another would be accommodations, but we’ll get to that later!). I had really wanted to hold the reception in a rustic barn, but weather and restrooms were our worst enemies. So we have happily settled on the building where the local county fair is held every summer. It too is rustic, but of a different variety.
Basically, it’s a giant room with a concrete floor, exposed beams and tin roof. As you can imagine, I am having a terrible time visualizing what it will look like when I’m done with it. For anyone who is struggling like me, I really suggest using your online sources for creating seating charts. I took the huge space I was working with and designated areas for dancing eating and drinking…and set tables around. Now I can start to see the environment take shape.
I’ll have to take before and after pictures so you see exactly what I mean!
What resources do you utilize in helping create the environment at your venues?
I just realized that although I shared with you our reception venue, I haven’t shared our very beautiful ceremony venue – a church. Now I don’t have photos of it taken by myself, but I find that this tells the story pretty well:
Funny story about choosing our Reception venue. I called, just to visit it, in October 2009. The owner informed me that he only had ONE Saturday date available for summer 2011! I almost fell off my seat. One date left… 20 months before?! I understand it only has two reception halls – the one we chose, and an outdoor one under a tent, but still. 20 months out, and practically all booked? Sheesh.
The one date available? The “dating” anniversary date of Mr. Magnolia and I. I’m serious! The coincidence was too much. We visited formally, fell in love with it, and booked, one rainy, gray day in October 2009.
If you live on the East Coast you know that the beginning of the month was a rainy one. There was flooding everywhere and brides who had a wedding that weekend were obviously freaking out. It reminded me how important it is to have a Plan B for your ceremony/reception if you’re having it outside. A wedding I was supposed to attend was being held under a tent in the back yard, on the water. The ground was so wet that they couldn’t get the tent to stay in the ground on Friday, and there was no way that anyone could stand in high heels, let alone dance in flooded grass. What surprised me though was that the bride didn’t have a Plan B! She had not prepared herself for Mother Nature. So at the last minute, 24 hours before her wedding she was unsure on where she was going to put her guests after the ceremony – and where she was going to celebrate.
Luckily everything worked itself out; the rain did subside on Saturday – and they had a beautiful day – but I can’t help thinking – why do some brides not have a back up plan for bad weather?
After much consideration of our budget and our original plan of having a New Year’s Eve wedding, we could not make it work. To us, we had the perfect date and the perfect venue. If I had a money tree, it would have been perfect. Getting back to reality, we decided to take a step back and re-evaluate everything. Good thing we did because we found the quirky venue we were looking for with a price that a penny pincher would love just by getting out of DC proper!
Now, we have a NEW date of September 17, 2011 in a NEW location of Alexandria, VA.
We didn’t have a date that was particularly “special” to us so when I accepted that the NYE wedding wasn’t going to work out, I was open to picking a date that the venue AND our planner had availability on next fall. Did you get your first pick of dates? How did you choose your wedding date? What makes it special?
