One more venue

I forgot to tell you about one more venue I had looked at!

This local cruise line hosts weddings, rehearsal dinners, and private charters, as well as public boat cruises and dinner cruises around the 1000 Islands.

Pros: Beautiful scenery, fun venue, beautiful scenery :)
Cons: everyone gets on and disembarks at the same time ... meaning, older folks can't leave early and younger folks can't dance later!

Venue Searching

More "Back to Basics"

Wade went with me to a wedding show in Ottawa. We were there from 10am - 3pm, and he didn't complain. He got treated to a yummy lunch as thanks. I went to a wedding show with a good friend of mine in Toronto. (I figured 2 wedding shows in one month was too much for Wade.) At the wedding shows, we looked at photographers and d.j.s, mostly for ideas. Since we live in Kingston, I thought it unpractical to hire a photographer or other vendor from Ottawa or Toronto.

I started searching for venues, mostly on-line at first.

Reception sites I looked at on-line:

Cataraqui Golf & Country Club

-Pros: good view of Lake Ontario, nice decor, convenient location and good food. My dad used to be a member and he has many friends who still are - so I have eaten there many, many times.
-Cons: not sure if a country club was what I was looking for.

Fort Frontenac Officers' Mess

-Pros: amazing food and amazing views. I couldn't find any good pictures of Fort Frontenac on-line, but my friends Jane & Matt had their reception there. This is Jane, demonstrating the lovely views from the grounds. The food was amazing, the site was amazing. Overall - amazing.
-Cons: The trouble is finding a sponsor for the event - this officers' mess is a prestigious mess with select membership. I was also very worried I would associate this location with Jane & Matt too much. They rocked it for their wedding! We didn't look for a sponsor, though the event coordinator was amazing and willing to work with us! But in the course of these conversations with her, our venue fell into our laps.

Fort Henry

-Pros: A popular venue for weddings, somewhat expensive, often having to be held outside. Gorgeous views and very good food in a unique atmosphere.
-Cons: I was worried this venue is a bit of a cliche in Kingston - silly, right? Plus, if it's a cool evening, a tent can only provide so much insulation, and early June is sometimes still cool

Renaissance

-Pros: Good pictures on-line.
-Cons: A new venue, so I would have been booking site unseen. I seriously thought about this venue, but the prices seemed a little high. There were no views (kind of a priority). Plus, it's literally stumbling distance from the "clubbing district" (aka 4 clubs) in Kingston - not exactly a good feature.

Waupoos Winery

-Pros: amazing food, amazing view of the lake, on a winery that looks like it belongs in the caribbean. (Swoon.)
-Cons: A bit of a drive in Prince Edward County, about 40 minutes away from Kingston. Totally worth the drive. However, for the size of our wedding, we'd need to rent porta-potties. And the prices were more expensive than Kingston.

Basically, at this point I had just started looking everywhere for possible venues.

All photographs from each venues' websites, except Fort Frontenac, which is courtesy of Jane's facebook.

Exercise Follow-Up

Here is the exercise I had assigned us to complete.

These are the words we wanted to be used to describe our wedding:

Me:

• elegant
• fun
• memorable
• striking

Wade (with some prodding / checklists of words to pick from):

• friendly
• fun
• joyous
• momentous

Noticed we both picked "fun"? I remember that I picked my words, then Wade wanted to know what I picked. I think he wanted to know what I picked so he'd understand what he was supposed to do. When he learned that I'd picked "fun", he realized that was a word he wanted, too. I think he picked momentous when he wanted memorable, but he didn't want to copy me too much. Plus, I'm sure it will be momentous - for us, at least!

But I digress. The point of this "exercise" was not to create a list, but to consolidate our ideas to find out what we hoped our wedding day would be like.

Second Things Second

Did you think about your wedding before you got engaged? Be honest. Did you imagine yourself in a swath of tulle? Or a sheath dress? Saying your vows at sunset? Or walking down your church's aisle?

Not everyone thinks about his/her wedding before getting engaged. I may have thought about what my wedding might entail from time-to-time - definitely not very often and not with any real seriousness. However, like many women, I already had an idea of what a wedding entails, what flowers I like, or even what a boutonniere is.

This is not always so with some men (and some women, too!). I don't know if my dad knows what a "boutonniere" is - and he's been a groom once, a groomsman and a best man, and attended many, many weddings.

So, maybe the next thing you should do, after the engagement excitement has settled and you're ready to start planning, is to talk to your fiancé about what he wants, so you can formulate a common idea of the wedding.

Things to ask:
-If he has an idea of how many people he'd like present
-Where he wanted to get married
-Where he'd like to party

I find that Wade gets overwhelmed or confused if I ask too many open-ended questions in a row. So I give 3 or 4 options and let him pick from them. I usually make him tell me why he picked the one he picked, what he liked about it, and what he didn't like about the ones he didn't pick.

I actually gave him an assignment: pick 3 words that descibe the mood or emotions of the day. He had a "deadline" and a sample list that he could pick from (or pick his own). That gave me an idea of what he wanted.

I also gave myself the same "assignment".

First things first

First thing we did? We got engaged on Saturday, December 15th, 2007. My parents were hosting an open house style Christmas party that night. So we told them at the party when we arrived. I made sure to call both my parents to the door when we got in, then told them.

Since this party included most of my family and family-friends, that's how they all found out.

I read in an etiquette book that the first priority is to tell your parents. Do you really need to be told that? The same book says that if you have children, you tell them before you tell your parents. Again, did you need to be told that?

We couldn't tell his parents for a few days, but we did in person.

... I know announcing the engagement isn't technically planning, but it is the first thing!

Back to the Basics

This week, I'm going to talk about first things to get started in wedding planning. Based on my experience, I will tell you what I think should be done first, and what can wait.

Before I get started, I want to know:

• What things did you start planning first?
• In retrospect, was it the right place to start? Why or why not?