There are so many venues and ideas for weddings these days it can make your head spin. Do you want to get married in a church, in a yard, on a beach, in a museum, while sky diving, etc. And the options for a reception are just as numerous and just as widespread. Do you want a full sit-down catered affair at a reception hall? Do you want a barbeque at your house? Do you want a tea reception? Buffet style? Brunch? A wine and cheese affair? Just finger foods? Or just coffee and desserts? Do you want to elope? Fly off to vegas? Go to the Carribean? Or go to the local winery? The list of possibilities just goes on and on and on and on. And more than one of them may sound perfect for you.
The idea of a local elopement stuck around for quite a while. The thought of going somewhere with our 10 to 50 closest family members and friends (depending on the venue), saying our vows, just the two of us having a romantic dinner somewhere, and staying overnight in a hotel, and calling it a day sounded perfect. Places such as the Inn at Perry Cabin on the Eastern Shore (http://www.perrycabin.com/web/omic/weddings_st_michaels_maryland.jsp) offer such packages. The price range for a ceremony like this is around $1,000 to $2,000, once they add things like the mandatory second night hotel stay if you have your ceremony on a Saturday, or the chair rental if you have the ceremony by the gazebo. Perry Cabin can accommodate about 80 guests.
Another place that offers an intimate ceremony-only style wedding is Chase Court in Baltimore. Chase Court is a beautiful gothic-style ballroom and garden which can provide you with a quaint outdoor ceremony in their beautifully lavish garden, and great scenery for pictures. An elopement package at Chase Court provides you with a ceremony for up to 10 guests, flowers, photographs, and an officiant for $1,700. Add dinner and an overnight stay in a local hotel and the price will run about $2,000. See Chase Court's elopement packages at http://www.chasecourt.com/2Elopement-Packages.html.
But the thought of having to exclude some important people, or not being able to have a dance with my father, or possibly coordinating an additional party or event for guests that couldn't attend the nuptuals made me take this option off the table. Why pay for two events and why hurt feelings when I could just pay a little more and include all the people that I want to have around me on my special day. A lot of people say that the day is not about others, it's about the couple. But for some couples, the day isn't important if you ignore the important people in your that helped guide you to this point in your life. So while intimate is great, it's just not the right option for us.
I also loved the idea of having a ceremony in my parents' back yard. They have a house that sits on about an acre of land, my father keeps it beautifully manicured, and it is surrounded by trees. We are a pretty non-fussy couple, and we loved the idea of having a casually cute event that wouldn't be restrictive as by things such as the number of guests, catering rules, and strict event times. But on the other hand, the thought of piece mealing everything together, such as tables, chairs, cups, plates, candles, food, drinks, who's going to cook, decorations for inside, decorations for outside, set-up, taking down, parking, do we need porta-potties, etc., and I decided it would be worth it to pay just to have a majority of those things already handled. In the end, it'd probably cost the same amount of money, but my stress level would be elevated because I'd be handling so much on my own.
So this ultimately lead me to trying to find a reasonably priced venue where I could have the wedding and the reception for 150 of my closest friends and family. And thus, the venue search began.
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