Perfectly Inspired: The First Inspiration Board

As some of you may know, I have another blog called Inspiring Brides where I create inspiration boards for different wedding ideas and color schemes.  Of course, I made an inspiration board for our wedding!!  Creating the boards is always a lot of fun... and especially fun for my own wedding.  I have a lot of ideas and plans (some of which have changed since I made this board) so the inspiration board is a nice way to see how everything works together.

This board incorporates my colors of choice, turquoise and yellow, chalkboards and fun accents.  It also includes something I plan to DIY for our wedding, hair flowers for all of the females who attend our wedding!  So what do you think of my initial inspiration board?

The Search for the Perfect Venue: The Mansion on Main Street

Sorry for being absent but it has been an extremely busy summer for us!  We Spent the fourth of July at the beach for a week and our weekends busy with friends, workouts and our pup, Lola.  I have also been busy pinning a bajillion ideas for our wedding and buying milk glass vases for our cernterpieces.

As for our search for the perfect venue, in ended in the middle of June!  We visited the Mansion on Main Street in Voorhees, NJ and immediately fell in love.  The woman we met with was great, there were ample picture opportunities (including the perfect spiral staircase) and a ceremony location both inside and out.  The inside ceremony location is housed in its own building which is something that I really liked about The Mansion.  Another thing that we really liked was the amount of food (and desserts) included in the excellent pp price.

We looked around for quite some time, exploring the patio off the cocktail room which can be used for the cocktail hour and also the reception room.   Everything seemed perfect, and they had our date available but we decided to go home and think about it before going further.  Two days later, we booked and got booking the venue out of the way nice and early!!

some pictures:

The Main Stairway, perfect for a first look!

image via Philadelphia Weddings 

 View of our ceremony space from the bridge

image via Zvents 

The indoor ceremony building if its raining

image via Wedding Mapper

The Search for the Perfect Venue: Spring Mill Manor, Morris Arboretum and Catering By Bruno's

This Saturday we went to two venues and met with a caterer as well.  It was a LONG day, but at least something good came out of it!  We found a caterer that we really, really like.  Let me start at the beginning though.  In the morning we went to Spring Mill Manor and it was really pretty!  Spring Mill is definitely on the high end of our per person budget though.  Also, the banquet room is a bit outdated.  Here are some pictures of the space:

all photos from Project Wedding

pros:

+pretty indoor locations for pictures (if it rains)

+they include more hor d'ourves, hor d'ourve statations and a desert station in their menu

+the venue has ample parking available

+nice bridal suite

negatives:

-at the top of our per person price range

-reception room decor is slightly outdated

Later that day we went to Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia.  I'll start off by saying, it definitely wasn't for us.  Morris Arboretum is a beautiful garden with tons of picture opportunities.  When we met with our contact, she showed us the three ceremony location possibilities.  They were just open grass areas, with no gardens in sight.  That was very disappointing for us, and to get married in the rose garden you had to pay at extra $1000.  Then we went to look at the reception space, another disappointment.  It was literally just a tent over a black top area connected to the visitors center.  Since we are not planning on spending a lot on decorations, this would not work out well for us.  Here are some pictures of the arboretum tent area:

pros:

+tons of beautiful places for pictures

+only one event a day

+ample parking

+a choice of outdoor ceremony sites

cons:

-tent is over blacktop and you have to pay for a dance floor

-the rental fee is high 

-ceremony can't start until 6 pm

-the rain backup ceremony space is not pretty

After the Morris Arboretum we met with a caterer that works with them.  Carl, from Catering by Bruno's invited us to his restaurant to try his food and talk about his catering services for our wedding.  We were extremely surprised by how easy it was to talk to Carl and on top of it all, the food was delicious!  The waiter first brought out three types of salad as Carl showed us some pictures of weddings they have catered before.  I was shocked, my fiancee was eating salad... and loving it (he usually won't touch a salad)!  Since we told him we weren't that interested in Morris Arboretum he gave us some ideas of other venues he worked at and insured me that he had the proper insurance to work at any venue that allows outside caterers.  After the salad we were served three vegetarian options, eggplant parmesan, butternut squash ravioli and gorgonzola & walnut purses, again all three were super yummy!  They also served us two types of chicken (for my fiancee) and a small pizza for me which were all just as impressive.  We asked Carl a ton of questions and he told us stories about his family, it was like being at dinner with an old friend.  I loved the fact that he mentioned that he tried to buy as many local and organic ingredients that he could!  At the end the chef (who is Carl's brother) served us strawberries with fresh homemade whipped cream, again.. YUM!  So now I have slightly altered my venue search and will start looking at places that allow outside caters in the hopes that we can serve Carl's delicious food!

The Perfect Dress: Inspiration

I am waiting until September to start trying on wedding dresses but I am obsessed with looking at/pinning/stalking the dress board on Weddingbee.  There are some things that I definitely want in my wedding dress:

• lace or taffeta or chiffon
• not satin/shiny
• straps or sleeves
• unique
• possibly tea length (although now that I'm engaged I am more into the long dresses)
• ivory

here are some of my current favorites:

Maggie Sottero Ella

Christos Arabella

Christos 2013 Collection

Karen Willis Holmes Vanessa

Sophia Tolli Neyda

Chaviano Couture

Henry Roth Denise

Maggie Sottero Florencia

Alfred Angelo 2243

Wow, I have a lot of favorites!  I hope when I start trying on it will be easy to find something I like.

The Search for the Pefect Venue: Warrington Country Club

On Saturday we checked out Warrington Country Club in Warrington, PA.  From the outside it was very pretty, a nice sized brick building with lots of flowers around and columns at the front entrance.

 

VIP Magazine 

We met with Patricia who was very knowledgeable and went over everything that was included in the per person price.  The only thing you had to pay extra was the bartenders and for the ceremony which would be held in their beautiful garden, weather permitting.  Warrington's per person price is extremely affordable and they give you a discount if you don't offer beef as an entree (then you would just offer a chicken, a fish and a vegetarian option) which is fine with us!  Plus they include hor d'ourves, a three course seated dinner, a five hour open bar, the cake and the centerpieces.  Since we are only going to have a small number of guests at our ceremony, Patricia told us they would waive the ceremony fee.  Another nice thing is they are doing a lot of renovating (which will be done by 2014) so hopefully they will update their decor a little bit.  Here is some pictures of the club:

 The ceremony garden via Wedding Wire

one of the rooms via Warrington Country Club

pros:

+ extremely affordable

+ lots of amenities included in the per person price

+ wedding cake included

+ location is close for us and our families

+ easy to get to

+ big dance floor

+ pretty ceremony space

+ plenty of parking for free 

+ our top pick for a date is available

cons: 

- decor is kind of outdated

- may be another wedding going on there at the same time (two seperate rooms)

- not a lot of places for pictures

The Search for the Perfect Venue: Beat Street Station

I am on a quest... for the perfect venue!  Of course, isn't every bride?  This is probably one of the biggest decisions to make and also one of the first that needs to be decided on, especially if you want to get married during the peak wedding months such as May or September.  Unfortunately, my dream wedding date is in one of those months.  Even though we are planning for May 2014, some venues are almost completely booked for the month already!  On the other hand, some are not even booking that far ahead.

Anyway, Saturday we had our first visit to what I thought was my top choice for a venue.  Beat Street Station in Manayunk, PA.  First off, Lisa, the director of events is wonderful!  She greeted us very promptly and showed us around the venue.  The reason I was so into Beat Street Station was that it was so unique, an old train station converted into a venue space.  Plus, they customize their menu from the bar, to the appetizers and different station options, even the dinner choices and a choice of dessert.  That helps you create a menu that is in your budget and Beat Street Station is very affordable for a wedding venue.

 source:  Wedding Channel

The inside was nice, with three different "sections"... the entryway/bar area, a small hallway with cocktail tables an optional photo booth and the ceremony/reception space.  And here in lies the problem, the ceremony space would have to be flipped during cocktail hour into the reception space.  Also, the reception space was pretty small.  They had it set up for 130 guests and it was TIGHT, being that that is around the number of people we will be inviting that worried me a bit.  Another downside in my opinion is that the bar is in a different room.  I am just not a fan of that personally.  My last hang up is that there is no parking, and you have to pay for valet parking which is a pretty hefty fee if you are on a budget.  Also, they were almost completely booked for May except for memorial day weekend, so we would have to either move into April or June most likely.  So while I still like Beat Street Station, I have a feeling that this will not be our venue.  The search continues this weekend!

source:  Wedding Channel

I didn't bring my camera this time but I will be bringing it from now on so I can keep better track of the positives and negatives of each place.

Positives=

+the event coordinator is very prompt with her responses, friendly and accommodating

+the venue is unique and beautiful

+the menu is completely customizable to fit your taste and budget

+fits into our budget 

Negatives=

-valet parking is a must and comes with a hefty price tag

-ceremony and reception space are the same area

- reception space seemed a bit tight for our number of guests

-bar is in a different room

-our top choices for date were already taken

Planning my wedding!

So, now that I'm engaged I want to document our wedding planning!  From the inspiration to searching for a venue to finding the perfect dress I will be sharing it all right here.  First off I'll share a picture of us on the night we got engaged (Cinco de Mayo 2012!):

My lovely fiance took me out for a nice date in a cute little town called Lambertville.  We went to a mexican restaurant and after we ate he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  It was very sweet and a perfect night.