Venue

Now that we have an idea of how many people we would be inviting to our wedding, it was now time to choose what location would best accommodate all of us!

My vision is for a simple wedding that has indoor and outdoor capabilities. I also wanted the ceremony and reception to be at the same location. There have been so many wedding that I've gone to where there was such a long break in between the ceremony and reception... it was always kind of awkward for me as a traveling guest. We wanted to get married sometime between April-September... no date in particular, really our main focus was to find a great venue, then see what dates they have available and pick from there.

Since the majority of people attending our wedding will be flying in or driving in from a nearby state, we wanted to choose something that's lovely, but still convenient for everyone.

We decided to focus a venue in or near my hometown, Columbia, MD. I grew up there from age 6-18 and my parents still live there. My Fiance also lived there for a couple years too, so his west coast family has visited the area before and are somewhat familiar the area too. Columbia is also right between two major cities so our guests can have easy access to explore if they are planning on coming in for a long weekend. The venue location is 20 min south of Baltimore and 40 minutes north of Washington, DC. It's also just an hour from where we live now (in Northern VA) so it will be easy for us to keep up with planning.

We started our venue search about 3 weeks after getting engaged. The second and only other venue we visited was the Historic Oakland Manor...and this became the venue winner! Here is a link: www.historic-oakland.com in case you want to check it out. It's an old mansion kind of hidden in Columbia. I went to a wedding here once and absolutely fell in love with the place. It has gorgeous landscaping that is always kept up so nicely, and the whole place has a lot of character to it... and it really goes along with the traditional/simple but elegant feel that I'm looking for. We get a discount on the price since my parents are part of the community association... so we're saving $500 off the price from the get-go. If you go on the site, take a look at the facility tour! Our ceremony would be held outside in the bishops garden... then cocktail hour would be inside the mansion in the foyer/banquet room... then dinner and dancing outside under the big tent. I like the idea of having different areas for each part of the wedding. That way people can appreciate and get a feel of the entire place. This venue is only a mile from two nice and convenient hotels... one of which actually has a free shuttle that would transport people from the hotel to the venue if needed.

Another spot that we were looking at but nixed was a hotel venue. We thought that way people don't have to worry about driving around in an unknown town and it would be super duper convenient since they would likely stay there for over night accommodations as well. The one thing that intrigued me about a hotel wedding was that they had wedding "packages" that included the reception hall, food, alcohol, tables, linens, centerpieces for one set cost per person... basically a one stop shop for planning a reception. I thought that may have relieved some of the wedding planning stress.
The hotel that we were possibly interested in, but passed on was the Columbia Town Center Sheraton. It's right on a lake, near a popular mall and lots of restaurants for guests to even walk to, and has gone through updated construction recently too. The ceremony would have been outside near the lakefront and the reception would be in the ballroom. The only thing that I did not like about this site was that the outdoor landscape was nothing to write home about...and the ballroom accommodates up to 300 people, so since we were only expecting about 100 people, that large room would have looked a little empty and we'd have to do a lot of decorating to make it feel more full. I mean it wasn't a super bad... but we didn't have a good "feel" from it.

So... the venue was set and confirmed for the Historic Oakland Manor. After we fell in love with the venue, we talked to them to see available dates. Luckily since we are planning so far in advance, they had a handful of awesome dates available. We chose a late June date... so I'm officially a June Bride!