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?
It was a whirlwind experience to create a concept from start to finish. I did it! I was able to pull together a gorgeous wedding with my husband. The first image is the view of our ceremony. A third of our ballroom was decorated like this. The blue, purple and pink flowers accentuated the tiffany blue. I just love our aisle centerpieces and archway. The centerpieces were then transferred to our guest tables and the archway was moved to decorate the cake table (see picture #2)
It had rained for 2 weeks before our wedding and given that we were having our ceremony outside we had to ensure that the grounding was safe (especially since I was definitely rocking 4 inch heels AND we were having some older people there that we did not need falling down). Also – a lot of the beautiful grass had washed away right in the area where I would be walking down the aisle. After thinking of all of the things we could use, from stone slabs, to literally offering to brick the entire thing for the venue – my dad had discovered 75% off carpet at Lowes. Yes, it sounds weird – and I was very reluctant at first – carpet outside? However he assured me that it was within my color scheme, and would work out perfectly size wise and everything.
I now present you with my carpet aisle (no judging, please, haha):
(Photo by Tom McCall Photography)
Are you doing anything out of the ordinary you are a bit weary about?
When Calla Lily Lovebug and I first got engaged we were on vacation. It was lovely and amazing and everything you want for an engagement, right? The only problem (and I so use the word problem lightly here) was that it was all such a fairy tale. We’re at the beach, just got engaged, no obligations, no work to go to, no school to worry about, essentially: HEAVEN!
Lovebug proposed on a Wednesday and we went back to reality on Monday. It was a lovely fairy tale. Here, let me show you:
Ahhh, memories I’ve always told myself that I would never be a bridezilla. And it seemed that this would be perfect. He proposed two years in advance of when we had discussed getting married so we had all the time in the world to plan! Right?
I’ve always told myself that I would never be a bridezilla. And it seemed that this would be perfect. He proposed two years in advance of when we had discussed getting married so we had all the time in the world to plan! Right?
