I feel like I got ahead of myself! Here I am talking about wedding outfits and I haven’t even told you WHERE we are getting married. That’s because finding bridesmaids dresses was a lot more fun than finding a place.
Finding a place to get married was quite the experience. I have mentioned that we really loved a place in Florida called Deering Estate.
Relaxed and beautiful. We had decided to get married in Michigan, though, so it was our goal to find a place in the Great Lake State that made us feel like this place did.
How to book a wedding venue:
Step 1. Make a preliminary guest list. And by preliminary I mean, a list that includes everyone you seriously want to invite minus the yet-to-be-born babies.
Step 2. Google, explore wedding websites and make a list of places that you like AND that will fit all of your guest. Do not visit places that are either too big or too small. I am really glad that we made sure to do this. Most places do not tell you how expensive they are on their websites, so it is a little difficult to know whether they are in your budget or not.
Step 3. Call and visit all those places. Does this sound terrible? Because it was.
Step 4. Get serious about one place.
That place was Meadow Brook Hall.
It is such a beautiful place. The house/castle is historic and the grounds are so lovely. There’s a big white tent outside where you have unlimited space to do what you want. It was also at the very tippy-top of what we wanted to spend.
Come December 2010, I contacted them to reserve our wedding date and put down a deposit. The person I had met with when we took our initial tour was on maternity leave at the time, and my experience with this new person was terrible. In order to make the price work for us, I had made some cuts here and there. For instance, I was going to use cupcakes instead of cake to avoid a “cake cutting” fee. All of my cuts were not okay with this lady. Instead of calling it a cake cutting fee, it was described to me as a caking “handling” fee so I still had to pay it. Sounds stupid to me. What do you think? The “it” place quickly became something else to me:
As we were driving to Michigan to spend Christmas with my family, I emailed our second-pick place to see what their contract would be like. I didn’t consider this place to be our first-pick mostly because my friend had her reception there and I didn’t want to copy her. I am not sure why I ever overlooked the beauty in this place.
Personal Photo
This place is Waldenwoods. Beautiful and relaxed.
Over the course of that 12 hour drive to Michigan. I realized that Meadow Brooks Hall wouldn’t work with me the way that I needed. Wes said something to me during that drive about how it would be nice for our wedding to be about us and not the place we are having our wedding at. I agree. Meadow Brook Hall would have made the wedding about them, not us. It didn’t help Meadow Brook’s cause when I emailed the woman at Meadow Brook Hall to tell her that the place was becoming out of our price range so we decided to go elsewhere and she emailed back to say “We understand that Meadow Brook isn’t for everyone…” Did I just make that sentence sound mean in my head?
Overtime, it has become increasingly apparent that Waldenwoods was the right choice all along in so many ways. The people at Waldenwoods are helpful beyond words. The view is stunning when the sun goes down over the lake that is not but 50 feet away from a big white lodge. Flowers grow all around the lodge. It is like going to northern Michigan without the drive. All of this would have been worth a big fancy price, but it is less expensive as well. Also, we recognize now that we want a wedding with simple and refreshing charm and Waldenwoods can give us that. That is probably why they were voted one of The Knot's 2011 Best of Weddings top pick in Michigan.
Waldenwoods makes everyone happy! Even the moms:
See the big bright windows of the lodge?
Lesson learned: the people who you work with matter.
Step 5. Drink a glass of wine and congratulate yourself on making your first big wedding-related decision!
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