{Wedding Talk} Picking a Perfect Venue

Last month, I told y'all all about the things I didn't want in our wedding venue.  

Then became the fun times of looking at things we liked.

If you know us, you would know we like our wine.

We visit wineries often, attend wine festivals, and take part in the local wine trails.

You will never come to our house and find it wine-less.

So naturally the first places we started looking into were wineries.

Lots of extensive research on winery websites within a 1-1.5 hour radius of where we live.

We even did a tour of our favorite winery.

Which everyone in my family and our friends was convinced it was the perfect place.

Unfortunately, wineries are expensive.  I'm talking WAY expensive.

This was no exception for our favorite one.  

For about half of our budget, we could have the winery for 5 hours.

And just the grounds.  

No chairs, no tables. No tent. 

All would need rented.

Sadly, this seemed to be the norm for wineries around here.

So on to more research.

Then came the ideas of barns.  

If you've been on Pinterest, you know all the barn-inspired pictures that show up.

And they are stunning.

One day while google searching, I stumbled onto a blog mentioning she where was getting married.

And it sounded perfect.

It had a large barn for the reception.  

And lots of weeping willows around a lake.

Weeping Willows are our FAVORITE tree.

I tried to find a website or facebook page and there was nothing.

Only a few pictures on a photographer's blog.

Apparently from reading on the forums, the owners do not advertise and only go by word of mouth.

This sounds good right? 

Insert Vanessa getting her hopes up.

So I call and the lady was super nice and helpful.

The price? As much as the winery.

Insert Vanessa's hopes being crushed here.

So we sat down and tried to work it into the budget.

And we couldn't.  We tried and tried but it just wouldn't fit.

So I went back to researching more and more and still sticking with the barn idea. 

And I found one that is 30 mins from our house.

Another one where they don't advertise and I only found 10 pictures on The Knot, with no reviews.

Too good to be true? Was I going to have my hopes crushed again?

So I sucked it up and called the owner and she was wonderful.

AND it was only a smidge over our budget.

Naturally, we set up an appointment immediately to tour the venue that weekend.

But more on that in the next post. ;)

How many venues did you fall in love with but had to pass on them?