Picking a Reception Location

If you missed any of my previous wedding recaps, look here:

The Proposal

Picking My Bridesmaids

Once we knew when we were looking to get married, we had to find various locations to have our reception. We wanted somewhere that was accommodating to all of our guests (we are inviting about 290) and one that was a good deal!

I started calling places a few days after we became engaged; actually, we were still on vacation but I was trying to set some things up! We knew we wanted to get married in late July or early August this year, so I knew we were right around a year when we started looking; aka get on this wedding planning deal!

Aaron probably regretted proposing to me the entire next week. We came home from vacation on Saturday, and I believe we had reception places lined up every night that week and a few the next week. In my head, I knew what I wanted. It was just a matter of finding a place that accommodated everything I would like!

What I wanted for our reception:

• Large dance floor
• Alcohol included
• Wedding coordinator
• Excellent food
• Positive reviews
• Little work for us
• Chair covers (included or able to be used)
• Our date
• Near our church

Some places we found that had a large majority of my qualifications missed some big ones. A few didn’t allow you to bring in any outside vendors, which meant I couldn’t have my chair covers. Some locations did not provide any alcohol, which meant we would need to do it all. This wasn’t so bad, and wasn’t my breaking point. My breaking point was when they told us we had to provide cups, napkins, straws, mixers, pop, water for everyone. I felt that was asking too much from us and we didn’t need to be bothered by knowing if we had enough.

We finally decided on a location that fit it all. It has excellent food (Filet Mignon, for example), chair covers included, uplighting included, room for my large cookie table, and game table I would like to have. It really fit everything we could have wanted! It was recently renovated, too, which made it look nicer. There is also an outside entrance (door is locked from the outside) that we can enter and go right into the Bridal suite until we make our entrances!

I would like to think this wasn’t stressful at all,  but it really was! Deciding on a date only came after we knew where we wanted to have our wedding, and which date was open. This was extremely nerve-wracking. I am so glad we were able to look at all the locations we wanted, and find one that we both love and close to both our houses, and the church! Our wedding actually ends up being two of our friend’s birthdays, so we will be sure celebrate that as well!

So there ya have it! After we picked our date and location, everything else fell into place!

This was one set up of our location. Surprisingly enough, our colors are going to pink as well!

Up next: Dress shopping!  

Questions:

• What is your dream location for a wedding, or just a party? Is it near the beach, is it near your home? I really wanted a place that was close to our houses! I knew I would be going there for a lot of consultations, and it has been so much easier with it being 10 minutes away!
• Would you want your wedding reception to be far from your church? Would you mind? This was really important to me. I want to be able to spend as much time as possible enjoying our reception, and not wasting time in a limo going to it. Our church is less than 5 minutes away from the reception, and our photo location is only about 10 minutes away. This means we can get everything accomplished, and be back to party our night away as soon as possible!