The Dress

This is not my Dress. Although I did try on a red one like this.

I thought it was kinda odd when Patrick suggested that I go ahead and go shopping for my wedding dress. And then he told me why he figured I would go that upcoming week. You see, I'm in my last semester of college and I was on Spring Break for the week following the Friday that we got engaged. He knew that I probably wouldn't have a lot of time to look for things with everything going on for school so he suggested that I go that week. After all, it would be at least another month and a half before I would really have entire days to devote to something like that. 

So I called my sisters and let my mom and dad know that we were going that following Monday. That first store was a complete no-go. They had some pretty dresses but nothing that was really like I was looking for. I wanted lace and lots of it. I also didn't want a lot of bead work. 

The second store had a lace dress that I loved but I didn't want to make snap judgements about it so I decided to think on it and come back if that's the one I wanted (LOL - This should have told me that it wasn't the right dress). Though, I really did love it. 

That Wednesday, I went shopping again. My Man of Honor (Yes, I said MAN of Honor) and his wife went shopping with me. I tried on some beautiful dresses and some that looked great on the mannequins. The thing is that what looks good on a mannequin didn't really look good on me.

Dawn (Robert's Wife) looked at me, and without batting an eyelash, said, "You look like a ****** pinata!". Robert looked at me and wanted to know where the bat was. Needless to say, that lovely antebellum style dress went back on the rack. I can't really say that I loved it all that much myself after trying it on.

I did find "THE DRESS" that day though. I'd love to tell you what it looks like but I don't want to tempt Patrick. So, I'll just say this. It isn't really anything like I thought I wanted. It just goes to show you that you shouldn't rule anything out when you go wedding dress shopping.

The Dairy Barn at Anne Springs Close Greenway

Fort Mill, SC

Even from looking at this picture online, we thought that this might just be the location we wanted. It's a renovated Dairy Barn that was originally built in 1947. But what you don't get a good sense of in this picture is just how big this place really is. 

The upstairs loft is used for mostly wedding ceremonies. In fact, they have rules against food being on the second floor at all. We were a little concerned about stairs for the older generation of our families until we kept reading and discovered that they do have a lift. It was beautiful to look at. All of the rafters and beams are exposed and the floor is the old-fashioned hardwood. This  room was massive. It will hold between 300-400 people for a ceremony. And this is just the upstairs! The picture below is just to give you an idea about how it looks.

Now we get to the downstairs area, which we did actually tour last. Its got a lot of space. This is great due to the fact that we want a dance floor and it will still hold all of our food and guests. The picture below gives you some idea but keep in mind that this is just one of the two big areas downstairs and that we will be using both big areas.

And this photo looks like it was taken about a fourth to half of the way into the length of the room. It's pretty big. I'm sure it won't seem like it when we put that many people into it but that's ok. We like it a lot and that is all that matters.

The Hunt for a Venue

We realized when we got engaged that the first thing we would have to do was find a venue to hold the ceremony and reception. Now, you would think this wouldn't be too difficult but we found out that week that there are several factors that had to be taken into account. 

1. Winter Wedding - we like both fall and winter but decided on winter as fall was coming up too quickly and we don't want to wait until next fall. Also, this means the wedding has to be indoors.
2. 150 Guests - this meant that we would have to find a place that would hold all of those people comfortably.
3. Dance Floor - we needed  to find somewhere that not only allowed this but would also be big enough.
4. Catering - do they cater or do we look for somewhere that will allow us to cater?
5. January - we picked January 2012 as the month/year we wanted to get married so we needed to know if they had one of our two chosen dates open. Those dates, by the way, were the 7th and 14th.
6. Most importantly - Do we like it? It could have met all those requirements but the sad fact of the matter was that if we hated it we weren't going to reserve it.

So from here, we started to cruise the web. We found several sites that captured out interest that weren't to awfully expensive. (That doesn't mean that they were the cheapest venues in the world either!)

Castle McCulloch  --  Jamestown, North Carolina

We liked the looks of this one and the price was pretty decent. We would have the room to do what we wanted to and it's gorgeous. Downside, the guests would have to travel a fair distance and we didn't want them to have to travel too far. They did have a fair amount of rules that had to be followed but for the bride and groom looking for an all-in-one stop wedding venue I would say talk to the people here.

Castle Ladyhawke  -  Western North Carolina Mountains

Again, gorgeous. This one, however, was not on the cheap side. It seemed a little steep. So we ruled this one out fairly quickly. It was lovely, just a bit more than we wanted to pay.

Elizabeth Manor  -  Charlotte Metropolitan Area

This one was lovely as well but had several major problems. Number one, that length of time it took the venue to respond to our inquiry. It took them almost an entire week to apparently check their email. Not good. The main room, as you can tell, is yellow. This won't fit in with our colors for our wedding so we tossed this one out of the maybe pile too.


So, at this point, we had one venue that was a maybe and not much else. It was time to hit the internet again. We did find a venue we liked and couldn't figure out why we had eliminated it in the first initial go-round. We decided to set up a tour and take a look. Wouldn't you know, it was perfect!

Stay Tuned...We'll show you our Venue!