The great venue search

Kenny and I are planning for a September 2010 wedding and already we are realising that we are under a time crunch, even with over a year left before the big day!

The biggest thing for me is picking a venue. Earlier in the week we finally went and actually looked at a venue in Newport after weeks of emailing around and getting astronomical numbers back for quotes. If I could offer anyone advise who is looking to plan a wedding, I'd say actually go to the places and talk to them in person before you write a venue off as too expensive. Within the first twenty minutes, the woman at this particular venue in Newport had dropped the price almost $4,000. Unfortunately it was still at the very top of our budget for a venue and if we had an unexpectedly large number of people RSVP yes, it would be too expensive.

To the left is a photo of the venue we went to in Newport, called The Ocean Cliff. I have to say it was so stunningly beautiful and the woman who met with us was very helpful and spent almost two hours talking us through the whole process. The ballroom in the photo overlooks the Narragansett Bay with the Newport Bridge in the background. If I could get married anywhere, this would be it, but that seems not to be in the cards.

So it is back to the drawing board for us. Yesterday we visited the Ledgemont Country Club in Seekonk, MA, right over the RI border. It was a very nice facility with a huge golf course, a pool, a large patio, and a nice ball room. It just couldn't imagine myself getting married there. First, the golf course was beautiful but they didn't have any little picturesque spots for photos...just the greens. Kenny of course was in Heaven and he was pretty disappointed that I didn't love it. I haven't completely ruled it out but I can't say it ranks high with the other venues we are scheduled to look at.

The sitting room area at Ledgemont

Tonight after I get out of work we have an appointment to go see the Cultural Center in Fall River, MA. I wanted to look at an urban venue since most of the others we have talked about are either in the country or on the beach. I have heard a lot of good things about the Cultural Center, and the photos online of it all done up for a reception are really striking. I love the tall ceilings and large open area. We'll see how they size up next to some of the other places we've seen or plan to see.