I imagine that I’m not the only girl who has ever had a long-term boyfriend and started fantasizing about the perfect wedding eons before the proposal took place. (I mean… hello, Pinterest anyone?) I’ve always been able to picture the dress (oh, did I mention I found my dress? As in – purchased it already? Yeah, stay tuned!), and the flowers, and even silly details like whether I would be dancing to a band or a DJ – but I’ve never been able to picture where it would be.
To start my venue search I hit the Internet. Facebook, if I’m being honest. I looked at the wedding photos of friends who have recently been married and tried to envision my big day at their venue. From there, I went to TheKnot.com and did some Google searches for venues in the area – looking for places that I thought fit the general “look” I’m going for. I was able to narrow down a list of about 20 venues (I know, right!?) to 4 top contenders. For the last couple of weeks we – my fiance, parents, and sisters – have been visiting those venues to check out the space and get some pricing information (well, that’s really my parents’ arena). The plan is to try to make a decision out of those four top contenders, so that we don’t end up having to go on a grand wedding tour of Southern New England. However, if we end up not loving any of them enough to book it, then I’ll go back and start scheduling more appointments. (So far though, it looks like of the three we’ve seen we’ve got at least one that we all agree would be 100% amazing to have a wedding at!)
The first two venues we checked out are both in Providence, RI. Both of them were pretty (actually, one of them was downright gorgeous), but there were a few “yeah buts” at both venues.
The first venue we checked out was a hotel right in the city. The biggest issue was that the ballroom is actually three stories underground and the area where the cocktail reception would be is three floors up, across the whole building, with some stairs involved. None of us were overly impressed with a ballroom with a single window in sight, and we had concerns about our grandparents being able to navigate the cocktail reception area with ease. However, I will say that the area that the cocktail reception would have been held in is absolutely stunning, and the guest rooms of the hotel are very pretty, and spacious.
The second venue we checked out was, as I said, simply gorgeous, and was a place that I had an early obsession with. The building was build in early 1900’s as a bank, and so the architecture and interior details were built to impress… and it does. (I didn’t want to name either venue here, since we didn’t pick either of them – but check out a photo of venue #2 below.)
However – as gorgeous as the venue was, it would never be big enough for us to comfortably fit 200 guests (well, we’re inviting 200 but expecting that we’ll probably end up with 175-ish), even though they say they could. This is where my Facebook endeavor came in the most handy. A friend of mine from High School was married there last year and said that she had 155 guests and it was a little tight, so there’s no way 175+ would be able to fit. And there were a lot of “oh we can do that but it’s extra.” Since the majority of the other venues we’re looking at are hotels, they’ve got packages already laid out that take care of the “extras” that venue number two would be charging us for. (Of course I realize that we’re being charged for them at the other venues – nothing is free! – but their “inclusive” packages make things so much simpler and makes budgeting easier since we don’t really need to worry about the “extra” fees that might pop up.)
So, if you’ve been keeping track you know there’s two more venues to be discussed. One of them we’ll be taking a look at this weekend, and the other we checked out this past week – and it’s the top contender, so far. I have my fingers crossed that this weekend’s visit will be the one, since it’s a venue I’ve been in love with for about a year now (it kind of looks like Hampton Court Palace from the outside so obviously I’m sold!) – but who knows… it could look completely different in person than it does in the photos I’ve been staring at for months.