Yesterday, Oliver and I jumped into the first REAL tasks of wedding planning. I have been doing plenty of research online and flipping through the Martha weddings magazine I bought a while back, but it was all more or less theoretical up to this point. On Friday, though, I noticed that one of my favorite potential venues was having an open house the following day and asked Oliver if we could go check it out. He was happy enough to go, and it was a nice turn of events that the place is located just a few minutes from the restaurant where his sister works (and an even nicer turn that she was working right when we wanted to be there!).
It was a gorgeous day, which was great for us since we are inclined to have our wedding take place more outdoors than in and we really wanted to get a sense of the grounds of anywhere we go to look. The venue itself is pretty and simple; it’s more or less empty except for bathrooms, a caterer’s kitchen, and a giant stone fireplace; and it looks like a giant log cabin. It sits on the edge of 26 acres of forested parkland — and that sounds perfect! The only problem is… it’s thick forest. With tall grass. Pretty much impassable without hiking boots, and I suspect you’d want to wear a lot of bug spray if you were going to go tromping through there. The cabin, of course, is not nestled right up to the forest. It sits, instead, in front of a huge open field that is kept mowed. I like that it’s flat, in the sense that you’re not soooo likely to be tripping over stuff out there. I don’t like that it’s FLAT, in the sense that there are exactly zero trees or other distinguishing features around which to build a ceremony or reception site. You’d have to put up a tent or two in order to be able to decorate much of anything, and in that case you might as well just stay inside, where there are real floors and bathrooms super easily accessible. Oh yeah, and the whole field has a great view of the road… and sounds carries really well across all that open air, so that you can hear every vehicle that passes by… not ideal.
So it’s not that I hated the venue. It’s just that it lacked a little bit of the character I was hoping to see. No big deal… it’s still on the list, albeit a bit farther down now. And I never expected to see one potential venue, fall in love, and be done. It’s all a learning experience.
Still, when we left I felt a little bit deflated. I’d have loved to love it. =) Thankfully, we were headed to lunch and to visit Becca at the restaurant, so that was a pick-me-up. It’s hard to be in a bad mood when there is good food and good company about. AND, we arrived during a perfect little lull in diners there, so we were actually able to talk to Becca and not distract her terribly from her work. Which was good, you know, because there was another motive beyond food for going to that restaurant…
I am kind of a scaredy cat about things that make no sense to be scared about. For instance, I am vaguely terrified to leave voicemail messages for people… even though I am capable of delivering a speech to a crowd of over 100 as long as I have had adequate time to practice. I detest going through drive-throughs and talking through those speaker thingies, but will walk right up to whoever in whatever store and ask questions. And I was being a big baby about calling Becca to ask her something, even though I had no reason at all to be nervous. Maybe it was just because it was something that meant a lot to me and I was making it a bigger deal than I had to. I dunno. Anyway, Oliver helped me through it (because he’s my knight in shining armor and he always helps me when I need it) and we finally managed to finalize one of the most important parts of the wedding:
Becca’s going to be in it! Yay! And since I had been procrastinating for so long in bringing it up (I mean… hers was the most important invitation for participation in my opinion — she’s gonna be my sister-in-law, people!), getting her agreement to be part of the wedding party completed our list of people to include.
That’s right: one thing pertaining to our getting married is DONE! And, happily, all of the people who we really wanted to be there to support us agreed to be do it. LUCKY! Oliver will be surrounded by his four best, lifelong friends — his best men — and I will have two cousins and a great friend there with me who have been instrumental in shaping me into the person I am today, AND my new sister-in-law — my best girls. I could not be more pleased and honored that they will all be there, helping us to take those last few steps into our new life together.
‘Twas a good day, no?
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