Inspiration vs. Reality, part I

Now comes the time when one asks oneself 'Was all that wasted time spent staring at blogs at work worth it??'

It took me longer than I had hoped, because I have to sift through photos, but here is my first comparison of inspiration V reality and I will ask you, the loving reader, to help me affirm that our wedding lived up to my ridiculous expectations.

As we go along (I think I have like five of these boards), you will definitely see where there are shots missing or different. If Ben didn't capture one thing, he did a better job than I expected capturing something else! Of course. Ben is awesome. Anyway, here goes:

INSPIRATION!

REALITY!!

Soooo?? I luuuurve this board. Lookin' good so far! I'll try to get these out in quick succession.

More location updates!!

I wanted to also make notes on the other places I hadn't yet visited since my last posts. Namely:
Lime Spring Farm and Cameron Estate Inn.

Mmm'kay, first of all, I want to start by saying that Lime Spring Farm had no info on their site about pricing, I think this is kind of skeazy, but I really wanted to see it, I hate walking in blind, but I had to walk in!! It was great, and because Kyle and my parents were there, I didn't take any video. They had a good amount of availability too, including the date 9-10-11. How cool would that have been?!?!

Now for the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad news: Rental is $6500 for the day with an additional $2600 fee for the ceremony. Add to all this the catering, which will be about $5000, alcohol another $1000. Flowers, $500. Photographer $1500-$2500, depending on who I choose. Cake, invitations, decorations, DJ... That equals at least $20,000... are you kidding me?!?!?! We immediately realized why none of this information is online and got out of there as soon as we could. Also, the reception would have been under a tent, on a concrete slab. I didn't say it then, but I don't like that. Anyway, the point of the story is that it would have been nice, there was a lot of nice attention to detail, but not worth that price, double every other place we were looking at.

Cameron Estate Inn was nice on the outside; this old, 1700 or 1800 mansion with 17 B&B style rooms, one with this awesome claw foot tub. The feel of the whole place was very plantation-ish, but in a good way, you know, highlighting the good parts of a plantation. Anyway, the ceremony sites were nice and they had limitless availability (which unfortunately also raises red flags). You know the bridge I posted two posts ago? Well, that bridge is too hard to get to for any of our guests that are even remotely immobile, not the mention impossible for anyone with a walker or a wheelchair. Anyway, the problem came when we walked into the reception site. It looked as though they tried to update it but forgot the whole theme and look or the rest of the estate, so it's just a decent banquet hall, nothing special, and definitely not estate-ish. So my mom and I were both turned off by it, but we enjoyed the champagne provided by the coordinators!

Memo to me, I don't care how cheap it makes me look, we will be having Verdi champagne at my wedding!!

Location Location Location...

Everyone knows this is important. So this is a very important post. We haven't even discussed budget yet, and of course that's important, but for the most part, if a location's packages are reasonable, you can always make the rest of the wedding fit into your budget. There are resources all over the web for what you can and cannot do yourself. It depends also on how important your time is. If it will take you a week to hand make all your invitations, is it worth it for you to possibly save $500+? Ummmm, yeah, yes it is. Flowers?? That may be another story. Are you really good at doing your own hair and make-up? Do you really need a mani/pedi?

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. There are a lot of possibilities of ceremony/reception sites. Because I could fill this whole page with images from all these places I mentioned in my last post, I will just touch briefly on the one picture that made me fall in love with each place. That's right, I'm in love with like 6 inanimate places right now. It's all very one-sided.


The Stone Barn: the second place we visited after Morris, this happened last weekend.
This should need no explanation, I love the old broken down feel of it. Can you see sort of a Lady of the Lake haunting this place? Wearing a flowing wedding gown and drifting across the pond? Well... I can, and it's pretty in my head, ethereal.

The reception hall was nice and had the red brick and the old wood, it was really what I thought I wanted. The drawback to this place, and it's a pretty big one, is that because we don't have enough people, we can't do our wedding down at the mill, BUT, if there's another wedding at the mill that day, we can't even go near it for pictures!!


Stroudsmoor Country Inn: our third visit, day after Stone Barn.

I think this one is self-explanatory as well. Here, I get the feel of a deer lost in the woods, or a Lady in the Woods type thing, I see a flowy, ethereal dress again. God I can't wait till I get to start talking about dresses! The reception hall is hunting lodge-like. I really liked how it tied into the woodland chapel theme. Kyle then becomes the hunter. Get it??? My only problem with this place is I have a bad feeling about budget here. The food is well-priced, the alcohol packages are double what I think they should be but still not outrageous, but everything else? I just have a bad feeling in my gut that we will not be able to find a well-priced photographer, florist, or DJ. The woman who showed us around gave us some common figures... we're talking vendors who cost as much as the whole wedding. Obviously you shop around and whatnot, but the Poconos is a romantic place, there's all sorts of weddings and honeymoons that take place there... people will pay that much, so who can blame them for charging that much??

The point is, I haven't had that feeling in my tummy yet, unfortunately for my fiance.


On to Mom's suggestions; Cameron Estate Inn: this Sunday!
This place is sweet, quaint, nice. It's not knocking my socks off yet, but everyone there that I've talked to is really nice and I'm willing to give the place a try. The ceremony site is nice, but so far, this bridge is what I'm most looking forward to seeing. AND, to make matters better, the tour they offer is a champagne tour. Count me in!!



Riverdale Manor... I honestly don't know where to start...

Please go to their website and look at pictures. I'm so worried that I won't be able to afford them, they seem expensive, but if it's as great as I think it may be, I might be splurging and just preparing my butt for the whopping I'm going to give it later. I do have a year to start saving for the debt I'm going to accrue...

Anyway, we'll see this place on Sunday as well.

By the way, while we're on it, Regents' Glen is out, I am not even going to visit a place where I have to dress up just to get in. Country Club my ass. Besides, they'll probably take one look at me and say "Uh uh, we do not allow dark people on our property." That's so disrespectful. Regents' Glen, please don't sue me. I hereby state that I have no actual knowledge of their sentiments towards people of color, I just enjoy racially-charged jokes, especially when it comes to country clubs.


My last favorite place!! Lime Spring Farm... If they'd only return their phone calls though!
This place feels so sweet to me. It also has a giant mural of a chicken on a wall of a barn. I mean, what more could I ask for? It's playful and romantic, it would just be a sweet wedding there. Unfortunately, they have absolutely no information about weddings on their website. Even the "brochure" where I got this photo; almost no info in it. Certainly nothing about pricing, menus, inclusions. So, ummm, still waiting on you to get back to me, Lime Spring.



GIANT CHICKEN!!!

That is all...

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!!!