With Hawaii out...

Where are we going to get married??? Even though this thought is about three weeks old, I'm still struggling with it, so it's still a present tense question!! Where are we going to get married?? First thing I looked for was garden wedding, because believe it or not, I don't want to get married on a beach. The appeal of Hawaii was the garden, with beach adjacent, it was paradise, it is paradise, that's why we're still honeymooning there. But, that's not for awhile, I don't get to relax in paradise until we get married! So, garden wedding it is.

We scoped out gardens in the area, the first one that pops up is Morris Arboretum northeast of Philly.

  


Yeah, and this barely scratches the surface

So, I schedule a meeting, and we go see the place, this was two weeks ago.

Turns out you can't have ceremonies at any of the sites pictured, they have special (and by special I mean completely unremarkable) sites right on the front lawn for the ceremony and the "reception hall" looks like an old basement. It was a huge disappointment, I thought it would be a bad idea to get married at a place where I was only there for the photo ops. Obviously I can just get those online. Next please.

It occurred to me about this time that gardens were too pretty and girly, or something like that, not exactly sure what was going through my head, but what I can tell you is this, my idea of a garden wedding was never going to be beautiful anywhere other than Hawaii. I asked myself, what is distinctly American? What can I do that would make me feel unique? What does America do better than any other country (other than baseball, football... nothing sports-related please)? BARN WEDDING!!



I mean look how great that looks! It took me a few days to realize that I was nowhere near as unique as I thought I was. Barn weddings are huge business, which means they charge an arm and a leg, they offer nothing as far as inclusive packages, and they're all booked up for September/October 2011. It was a huge letdown, firstly because I started looking at prices, now mind you, I didn't have a budget in mind yet, I was just scoping things out. But these people wanted $3000-$7000 just for a rental fee!! And let me reiterate, this includes NOTHING! No food, no alcohol, no tables, no chairs, no linens, no flowers, no DJ, no photographer. Like I said, huge huge letdown, I was so excited about wearing my cowboy hat and buying some really nice cowboy boots and rocking out country style. My favorite is still The Hayloft (the second picture) but you'll be lucky if you can get in there anytime within the next two years! For some reason that I'll never understand, they refuse to do weddings in October, instead they choose to do the Haunted Hayloft, which is fine, I'm sure it's good revenue... hey isn't a Haunted Hayloft kind of a night time-like event?? Well whatever, I'm sure they have to set up the barn a certain way and they can't break it all down for one dumb girl's wedding. The Hayloft was really well-priced and most everything was included. I still get depressed when I think about it, The Hayloft will always be the barn that got away, because God forbid, I tried to plan my wedding a year in advance instead of two.

I don't wanna' talk about that anymore... I continued my search, my mom found a few places, I found a few places. When you google search barn wedding or rustic wedding, a lot of things come up, but a recurring theme, and also two places I also saw on the knot were The Stone Barn in Kennett Square and Stroudsmoor Country Inn up in the Poconos. Along with that, my mom found Cameron Estate in Lancaster, PA and Regents' Glen in York, PA and my sister suggested Lime Spring Farm in Lancaster, PA. Last but not least, I also stumbled across the Historic Riverdale Manor in Lancaster, PA. This entry is already quite long, so I'll dedicate a whole new post to it if I can get to it tonight.

I can feel it, we're close, we can almost start thinking about wedding dresses!!!