Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Ever since The Gryphon and I returned from our trip to Vermont a few weeks ago, I have been consumed with doing research and preparation for our wedding.

During the daytime, when I should be accomplishing other things, like sending my poetry to magazines, I've been researching everything from invitations to ideas and source images to play out our theme.

So far, according to the wedding checklist we found in the excellent book, The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner by Carley Roney, we've already accomplished most of the tasks we're supposed to complete one year out from the wedding, such as set a budget and decide upon the type of your wedding and reception and the style.

The most important thing that still needed to be settled was to secure a site and schedule a date and time. After doing research together on several area wedding sites, plus a listing of reception sites pulled out of a bridal magazine, we had some places to track down. We also did some brainstorming on our own of places that weren't on those lists.

Since I work at home during the evenings, I made the phone calls and wrote the e-mails to these various sites, requesting information. We went over them together and narrowed them down to a handful of possibilities, which we then visited on site. I wrote about some of those sites in a previous Musing, namely Drexelbrook in Drexel Hill and The Saturday Club in Wayne.

On Saturday, we looked at the last two sites on our short list. If neither of them had worked out, we would have been back to square one.

Both sites are hotels. One is a hotel we'd been to before for several New Year's parties and one wedding celebration. We were looking for a place where we could hold both the ceremony and the reception. Ideally, a number of services would be included in the price of the facility, so that we wouldn't have to pay extra for such items as a cash bar.

Based on the research we'd done, doing it this way is a better deal than a lot of places which only include the tables, chairs and food in the service but charge extra for the linens and the service. While the per plate cost appears lower, the overall cost is often higher.

The first place we looked at was a moderately priced suburban hotel owned by a luxury hotel chain. Immediately upon getting out of the car, I had a favorable first impression because, as we were walking up to the front door, we were greeted with beautiful landscaping: a variety of brightly colored, well-maintained flower beds.

Inside, the lobby was a huge, open space with high ceilings, tasteful furniture and dozens of well-maintained plants. It made it seem almost like an indoor garden, rather than a hotel lobby.

We told the front desk clerk that we were there to meet the event coordinator, and she told us to sit down in the lobby and wait. A few minutes later, she came out to greet us. My first impression of her, as she walked across the lobby wearing a loose-fitting hotel uniform, her long hair pulled behind her back, was that she looked really young.

Any fears were dispelled as soon as she began to talk to us. She was friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Every question we threw at her, she gave us a ready answer, and we liked what we heard. She was open to new ideas and suggested various ways of playing out our retrofuturistic theme.

She was going to show us the ceremony room first, but it was locked, so she notified the front desk to unlock it and showed us the rest of the facility first.

We walked up to the atrium where we would hold the cocktail reception. It was absolutely beautiful, with a rooftop ceiling. As she was explaining how it would be set up, I could picture our guests enjoying themselves. The modern design of the space worked very well with our theme.

Next we viewed the room where we'd have the reception. She explained where the dance floor would be and places where we could locate a head table and a DJ, plus where the bar would be. The space was modern in neutral colors, and I asked her about some of the ideas we already had for how to decorate. She had tons of suggestions, which I found really helpful.

She already has lots of connections to vendors and rental facilities that could get us what we want, and she said she would pass the costs directly on to us instead of adding any surcharges. Most places, we've discovered, charge an additional convenience fee.

Last, we viewed the ceremony room was a nicely maintained meeting space room, decorated in neutral colors. We liked this, because it would give us a lot of flexibility to do what we wanted with it. Because of our retrofuturistic theme, we didn't want a place that looked too strongly like another style, such as a Tudor mansion.

Finally, we sat in the lobby with her and discussed some additional questions. Because of what we'd been discussing, she brought out a couple books that showed swatches for different linens we could use and a book of cakes from the bakery that will supply the cake included in our fee.

We were so excited about the place that we asked her to put a hold on the date that we wanted so we could discuss it further and come to a final decision.

Our second appointment was in a little more than an hour and a half, so we drove there and had lunch in the bar area (the restaurant not being open for lunch on weekends). We went to the front desk to tell them we were there to see the wedding coordinator.

While she strode across the lobby with a sense of purpose, dressed in a very professional looking ensemble of black turtleneck, black pants and heels, it soon became apparent that she was far less knowledgeable and experienced. In fact, she admitted to only recently having been moved into that position from the food services department of the hotel.

We had been to this hotel several times before, and they'd done a little redecorating in the meantime. It's a much smaller place, and the decor is more distinctive, with an equestrian theme and a country club feel (lots of rich woods and deep colors like hunter green, dark gold and burgundy). That was one strike against it, because that feel clashed a bit with our wedding theme.

First, she sat down with us and talked about the package and where the different parts of our wedding could be held. The packet she said she'd sent us had never arrived, but she had a folder ready.

Next, we walked across the breezeway to look at the ceremony site. The doors were locked and her keys didn't work, so she went to get somebody else, who also had trouble opening the door until it finally opened.

This room, strangely enough, was the exact same room we'd been to before for both our New Year's parties and for the wedding celebration, so we knew it quite well. Strangely, without tables in it, it looked even smaller.

She told us how it's normally set up for ceremonies, which were mostly traditional ideas. I asked her about more creative decorating, and it struck me that she didn't have a lot of suggestions. It struck me that if we worked there, we would need to determine everything ourselves. I liked the idea of having someone more knowledgeable than me helping me out.

Then we walked downstairs to where the cocktail hour would be held. Unlike the ceremony room, which was pretty basic, the downstairs atrium where the cocktails would be held was very much in keeping with the hotel's country club decor, down to a grand piano, dark green walls, and stained glass lamps. It really didn't fit the feel we were hoping to achieve, though I could see it working very well for another type of wedding.

Last, we viewed the ballroom where the reception would be held. Again, when we asked her about our different options, she went through a rote list of how things were typically done. I got the impression that if you wanted to differ from the cookie cutter way of doing things, we'd have to come up with those ideas all by ourselves.

We asked her a few more perfunctory questions before getting the available dates and shaking hands to conclude the meeting.

When we sat down later in the day to crunch numbers, we realized that we'd probably end up spending more at the second location, because of the fee structure and the fact that she'd already quoted higher prices for some of the decorative touches we were considering than the other coordinator had quoted.

We decided to go ahead with the first site. I called and left a message this morning that we'd like to proceed to the next step.

They say that when you see the place that's right for you, you'll know right away, and I'd say that was definitely the case with the first site. So now we can breathe a little easier, knowing that we'd done everything we should have accomplished by this stage in the wedding planning. Feels good!

More on Alyce's wedding planning:

Musings on Alyce's Wedding

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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