I had begun creating a wedding binder and had organized it into categories like "Flowers," "Stationery," "Music," etc. I was printing out monthly to-do lists, courtesy of The Knot, but I realized that I was using up way too much paper, so I just maintained the list directly on the website. With over 12 months still to go, the first things I really needed to set my mind to were deciding on a budget, looking for a venue, and looking for a caterer.
Kevin and I began looking online for wedding venues, and we came across several. By this time, it was beginning to transition into winter time, and we diligently drove out and visited venues in the snow and ice. We met with the coordinators and set up a proposed plan and invoice for each place we visited. We then compared prices and chose the one we thought was the best fit for us. Here are pictures of some of the venues we looked at:
We met with Louie, who turned out to be my old elementary school bus driver (what are the odds?!) and he took us on a tour of the facility. Wow, see that fountain in the second picture? Don't be fooled. It was a joke. That area was the front foyer with a concrete floor painted white, with cracks that had been caulked over and re-painted. There were white painted metal chairs as well, that were beginning to rust. The whole foyer smelled musty as soon as we walked in. This prompted me to give Kevin a look that he promptly returned.
We entered the actual banquet room to find that it had dividers that could be used depending on the size of your party. The dividers were made out of this pink carpet like material and made the space look unequally divided. We told him the size of our party, and he showed us the space we would have allotted for us. (I gave Kevin another sly look. He can totally read what I mean just by the funny looks I give him.) After the tour, we sat down to come up with the proposed invoice. He wanted WAY TOO much for cracked concrete floors and pink carpeted dividers and walls. We thanked him and said "We'll let you know."
This was a nice place, but the thing I didn't like about it was the stairs you have to go up for the ceremony to take place. I have back pain and feet pain pretty often so I knew right away that that would be a factor (not to mention the fact that I'd be in a long dress in heels!). It was pretty and had plenty of space and decorations. In the end, it was going to be a little too expensive, mainly because of the meal choices. We knew we would need to provide meals for our guests because it would be dinner time on a Friday night, and if I were a guest at a Friday evening wedding, I'd want to eat too. The stairs also proved to be more than I was confident enough to handle so we nixed it, but kept it in mind as a last resort. It was MUCH BETTER than the Atrium, duh...
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