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!