Wedding Deets - Venue

Guys.

4 months from today we're getting married. 

So....there's that.  Eek!  Like most things in our culture, wedding planning has become something of a massive undertaking - have you heard?

It's a big deal, apparently.  

Once one decides to get married, one needs to race and find a venue, because, like, all the good venues totally get booked years in advance and you JUST WON'T be happy in your marriage unless you have the perfect venue.

Or something.

We had a great time searching for venues.  There was exactly one date that we could use that worked for my school schedule and our family members, so the venue had to be on our date, and it had to be in our budget.  We knew that we couldn't do anything REALLY far away because it wouldn't have been affordable, but we wanted something mountain-ish that our family and friends could use as a mini-vacay.

So, we came up with this:  Quasi destination wedding with just family and very few friends, and then a bigger PARTY in Greenville, where we live, shortly after that.  That way, we could have time with our family, and a party later - not having to split time on one day between a gazillion people, yet still get to celebrate with all the people we wanted to at one of the two events. 

It works for us - that's my only argument for this particular plan. 

So, we emailed.  Are you free?  Will you let us bring 50 people to your property?  Is it $500/person/night?  That won't work for us.  What reception packages do you offer?  Is that negotiable?  

We narrowed it down to two places, and right before we could visit one of them gave away our date.  AWESOME. 

So, we went to visit our last option - we liked the pictures online, and the price was well within our budget, but we've all seen the horror stories about fake pictures for hotels online so....we didn't get our hopes up.  We drove up to High Hampton Inn after this particularly lovely brunch, and saw this:

Um, well, yeah, that might work. 

This place is GORGEOUS, guys.  We couldn't believe that we could afford it.  It's under a 2 hour drive for most of our guests, totally rustic, and totally amazing.  When I say rustic I mean that we have been advised to have LOTS of food at the reception because no one delivers pizza to the property and nothing on the property stays open past ten.  

It's like camp for big kids, basically.  Remember Dirty Dancing?  Like that.  Games, activities, dining hall, the works.  It's rustic but not TOOOOO rustic for us girls, and we can't WAIT for our wedding there.  In four months.  Eek!  We're doing the rehearsal dinner and reception in the same place, with the same group, so we're especially glad that we went with the family-only small group for this.  We really want our families to get to know each other, and this will be an especially lovely venue for that.  ALSO.  It's going to be 10 degrees cooler than Greenville with no humidity or mosquitoes, which is a HUGE deal in August.  Huge, I tell you. 

So there we have it.  One venue that was available, and it turned out to be perfect for us.  Phew. 

We're still working on the Greenville reception but...we're making our own beer for that one, so stand by for more details on THOSE shenanigans.