The Reception Venue

The Issue

Wedding reception venue’s are up there with some of the hardest choices that you ever have to make for a wedding I think.  A lot ends up riding one that choice.  It sets the scene, the mood, the whole shebang. Step wrong on this point and it can take a lot to get yourself out of the hole.

When you read all the wedding literature and paraphernalia they are all rather silent on the best way to go about this.  For the most part they are concerned with location and cost.  Location in a  general sense – being at home, in a park, at a venue or a destination (though nothing more specific then just ‘destination’).   Money purely based on what you can and can’t afford.

But comparing between each of these options really barely ever occurs.  And by far-and-away the biggest assumption is made is that the reception is going to occur at the likes of a hotel or other traditional reception venue.  But this just isn’t the case anymore.

Making this very choice, and looking at potential venue’s caused Megan and I a whole heap of heartburn and concern.  We were limited in time because in the US most places seem to book around 18 months before the event.  Indeed the place we ended up locking in for August 2012 only had one weekend left available!  This is in Feb 2011!  This shocked me!  So we had to look at some places and lock something in more or less while we were there in February to make sure it was something we had seen, liked, and was available.

The Advice

Some advice from theknot.com suggests:

Locating the right spot to host your fun, formal affair is your greatest challenge. Having the wedding in a hotel ballroom will lend a very different tone than having it in an old weathered barn on your grandfather’s farm. Locate a distinctive venue — scout out old nightclubs, movie theatres, city roof gardens, hip restaurants, art galleries, or historic mansions. … You can even change the mood from one area to the next with the lighting: one room might feature white and ivory paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling while the next may be outfitted with deep red beaded lampshades on every table.

I’ve underlined a couple of items there that i think are important.  For many, formal is a given.  How formal is up to personal choice – its a sliding scale so it is fair to use that word.  The other is the one I think gets glossed over – fun.  Who doesn’t wasn’t a fun wedding?!  I can’t think of anyone.  The final item is distinctive.  Who wants their wedding to be forgotten or remembered as just another wedding?

Our Hunt

We looked at a number of places,  from Cheeseman park, to the Broadmoor in Colorado Spring, to the Arrabelle in Vail.  We also did the desktop audit of potential places, utilising the internet and 3 magazines for Colorado weddings.  We looked at a large number of hotels and other similar type venues around Denver and Aspen, Vail and the mountains.  We reviewed countless photos and obtained estimates as to the cost of respective potential venues along the way.

How to Choose?

So here are my tips.  The advice doesn’t ever tell you how to pick a place – just the options that are available.  The knot has you looking at cinemas, old spaces, ballrooms etc – but how do you choose amongst them all?

Following from my last post about “expanding the pie” and looking at needs and objectives other then just dictating an arbitrary position and not looking at the underlying reasons and logic that were used to get there,  here are my here are my tips which might help you get to the heart of your choice.

Feel

And you know what, the biggest thing that impacted on our choice ended up being the ‘feel’.  Feel is that something ineffable which you can’t pin down, other than saying that a venue just ‘feels’ like you.

The difficulty with this is that while you walk out of a place loving it, other people just can’t see how it is that you can arrive at that conclusion – that “something ineffable” feeling was triggered was for them at some other venue – most likely a venue where you felt like you stood out like a Bruce Lee in a sea of Steven Segals.  Trying to get your point across at this stage is not easy.  Here you can quickly fall into the zero-sum “well it just does” attitude that can really push divisions and doesn’t help achieve multiple need resolution.

Regardless of the difficulty, I think for anyone looking for a venue, the most important thing is, does it have that ‘ineffable’ feel.  Can you picture your wedding there?  The knot quote above has some good concepts in it – the tone is the part that I think really does develop your location choice a lot.  For us tone was perhaps another difficult thing to quantify.  We are all about class,  but not about gratuitous class, or uncomfortable formality.  For us it was something that raised the bar class and tone wise, whilst not becoming overdone, stuffy, arrogant, gratuitous etc.  It still needed to be personal and comfortable and relaxed for our attendees.  We wanted classy, but comfortable.  So that no one feels out of place and that classiness is an organic thing which occurs not because of what the event is forced to be, but because that’s the type of people we know and how they fill a room.  You can have the Ritz Carlton or Waldolf lined up, but if you and your guests aren’t comfortable in that environment then its not going to work.

Personality

So that was the first thing we were looking for.  The other thing – which is also in tone – is personality.  We wanted a place with some personality.  Like a place that would feel about right in a Stephen King novel – a place that somehow was imbued with its own sense of self.  That’s really hard to identify, and we found a few places with that, and a few places without.  And you know what generally did that, was places with windows – which gave themselves a setting.  There was a gorgeous room at the Broadmoor which we visited, and it looked out over the mountains and a golf course,  and it really coloured the room as well, made it richer.  We also saw some rooms which had no windows – hotel ballrooms – which really then struggled to gain their own personality.  Perhaps its something to do with the finishes that hotel’s can purchase these days – anything for that kind of scale ends up being inoffensive – capable of being liked by many.  The problem is that that also means that its often not loved by many…  Those types of places that are more ‘indifferent’ in their execution feel like the Toyota of venues – well done, 7/10 in all boxes,  but 12/10 in none.

Identity

So we have tone, we have personality.  The next thing that was on our list was identity.  This perhaps doesn’t come up for everyone, but for us we wanted something that was recognisable.  Remember those weddings you go to and there is no way to really determine where you are?  your in another one of those rooms (no matter how tasteful) that they are always in.  its a function room, of that general design.  There may be a theme to a room with its decor and decoration, but its not identifiable as being something or somewhere.  This for us was all about Colorado.  Megan is, and always will be a Coloradoan.  But she hasn’t lived there is over 1/2 a decade now.  more like 7-8 years.  So for her, as much as guests travelling to Colorado there is an important element of being identifiably Colorado.  That ‘home’ feel for Megan.  You don’t travel half way across the world and subject yourself to planning a wedding half way around the world because you want it to be in Colorado, and then not actually have it such that the ‘Colorado’ of the event is a pervasive and intrinsic part of the wedding!   So for us the place needed an identity – Colorado.

Personalisation

So we have tone, personality, identity.  Last but not least we wanted to be able to make it personal.  To give it out touch.  Not an easy task for any venue.  They all like to be able to control and regulate what you can and can’t do in their venue.  Can’t touch the roof, walls, certain tables available etc….  If you want to make a place “feel” like you, have “personality” that you makes you think ‘fun’ and have an “identity” you want, then your going to need to be able to personalise it a little.  Also, what bride doesn’t want to be able to make some changes here and there to give it her own touch.

So my tips:  Feel; personality; identity and ability to personalise.

We think we found that in the place we have chosen.  We wanted Colorado.  And the thing that makes everything think Colorado is the mountains and the outdoors.  So two things straight away were there for us to give that innate sense of identity – the mountains and the outdoors.  Mountains was easy for us – we thought if the mountains are key we should be in or close to the mountains.  Why have people travelling from Canada, other US states and Australia to be close to the mountains, but no either right in them, or right next to them?!  We didn’t want to have the wedding outdoors (just not going to be formal enough for us) so we had to find somewhere that bought the indoors to us as much as possible – really dragged the outdoors into the venue.

Personality was found with what was really a venue that was in many ways a blank canvas internally for us to be able to develop ourselves, allowing us to personalise it at the same time.  A couple of the photos below demonstrate that i think – a couple of different set-ups and each one has its own very unique feel.  We were pretty comfortable with that knowledge, knowing that while it might look like a ‘blank canvas’ when empty, we would feel it with a personality that merges both ‘Colorado’ and “Megan and Luke” together in such a way that our guests would be sure to have a lovely, fun, formal, memorable evening.

Time will tell…

The Choice:

being part of the mountains, dragging the outdoors indoors…

You can see through the glass in the walls, so that the mountains and the views are visible from all sides…

Personality – one option (small)

Personality – Another option (medium)

Personality – a final option (big)

Engagement 101, Part Duex

Where were we?

Well, Last time I don’t think i actually ended up getting very far with the story of the great engagement.  At least I think perhaps I demonstrated if nothing else a proposal for a guy is like an iceberg – the event itself (the proposal) is just the tip of a 13 storey monolith that wants to take you to the murky depths of the seabed and cause great injustice to be done to cinematic efforts around the world for the sake of a dollar.

My apologies,  that would be what might be termed an infraction – a segue into a different topic.  I’ve been warned about doing that…

The Horror

Tip of an iceberg – that’s where we were.  And it is!  Once you have the venue (or at least a state and country, lets not get into the venue to prematurely)  you have the whole process then of lining yourself up with a ring that will get her to say yes, in the case you haven’t got her confounded enough to say it already.  I was lucky and had managed to pull the wool over her eyes long before…  Rings are a minefield as well.  It was the next step in my planning though.  The research, the research (i feel like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now … the horror, the horror…  on another segue I’m not sure what should be read into the movies that continually come up in my head writing this…  One was about the horror,  one just was a horror…)

For me I was lucky – again – we had walked past jewellery stores before and looked at rings for ‘the fun of it’, so I had the advantage of having an idea as to what the lovely lady liked, and didn’t like, and what looked good and didn’t look good.  I also got to look at the spectacular price one of those suckers can set you back (keep your voice down Brando).  You know I should have been a writer – they earn good money… could have avoided a real good one.  I once asked a writer what type of writing pays the best…  ransom notes he said.

Infraction I know.

Diamonds

I spent a good three weeks at my new job in lunch breaks and before work (being dropped in at 7am affords one at least an hour in the morning over coffee to get overwhelmed by the law of the diamond) researching.  And there is so much to learn about diamonds.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a little on the neurotic side when it comes to buying things.  I need to know that I’m getting a good value equation, a solid investment more or less out of everything that I buy.  At least the things that I have a particular opinion about.  If I’m indifferent I just go for something that does the purpose.  But, I’ll be honest I can drive people made researching the slightest purchase.  At least I can drive Megan mad.  But she has figured it out now so that when she wants a new cordless phone in the house she knows to tell me about wanting to get one about 2 weeks before she actually really wants it.  This gives me time to research the marketplace and settle on what i think is the best purchasing experience.  Its why I just really struggle with buying clothes.  you can’t compare clothes to ensure your purchasing experience is going to live up to the expectation.  Its such an ephemeral purchasing experience, and I just don’t care for it.  If there is something ineffable about, it’s just gonna freak me out and get me all worked up about buying.

So you can imagine with that in mind what it was like coughing up for this pony.  It was a research not only about the 4-C’s which are again the tip of the iceberg.  You have brilliance, florescence, culets, isotope chromatography reports, cuts, ratios, percentage high-to-depth-to-width, angles.  Now your dealing with that and you’ve got to basically have a scatter chart to price these things and then way up the value of each item and find identical diamonds but with just one variable and compare different and then do a regression line to get a pricing curve that your happy with to make sure your not loosing out on your purchasing potential (I mean look at it this way, your going to be looking at it for the rest of your life, if you have A which is x quality for $y and B which is x+1 quality for $y what you gonna wanna be lookin’ at?!  your going to wanna look at y with that x+1 aren’t you?!  Dam straight skippy your gonna wanna look at that extra +1 and go, yep, i found that sucker).  So this process went on for sometime.

Believe it or not as well there are different platinum’s as well!  Can you believe there are some shonks out there that are cutting the shit with cobalt and other ‘meh’ grade metals.  They are like a sophisticated mans cocaine dealers.  Seems that there are better and worse grades of platinum depending on the metals that they mix it with to make sure it is shiny and has the right weight.  But very few are super long lasting and scratch resistant – yep the rarer more expensive types.  So then not only do you have the DESIGN you can’t even start that until you have the right ALLOY!

Did i mention the iceberg thing?

I once had a dream about…  nevermind, point of the story is that it can overwhelm!

So,  after a month or so of exploring design, quality, technical specifications etc on these things I had it all narrowed down and I wanted to start the buying process.  Well then bugger me if there isn’t a dam shortage of good quality diamonds at the moment due to the GFC.  The few places cutting diamonds really well and making the good ones slowed down i the downturn to return inventory.  Then we all got into our credit cards and comfy with debt a little quicker then they thought…  Now add to that there is trouble getting the diamond with the minimum standards you want.

Ice with your bourbon?

Boxes

but before you buy the ring as well there is the problem of all the very dodgy ring boxes they come in – they are all branded!  its like shameless advertising of the jeweller.  Shame on them shame!  I’m realising that my rather obsessive level of detailing about the whole thing might be coming across as rather unbalanced and not healthy.  ….  …. I don’t know how to answer that …  lets move on…  lets not dwell on our own faults, our friends do that for us more then enough over a drink or two.

The much harder question

New personalised custom made box (which nearly got lost in the Brisbane Floods days before we were to depart for Colorado), Ring chosen and selected there is the really, really hard question to ask – the father for permission.

This might be a very unique circumstance.  Well not might, is.  There seems to be many many people who have difficulty with this part of the process.  I only say this because now looking at wedding magazines (don’t get me wound up on that one, its like a perpetual motion device) there are whole sections – chapters – devoted to how you get around this and come out in one piece.  I guess I was lucky I’ve always got on well with Megan’s parents,  no doubt in part due to the incredible good fortune that perhaps they can’t understand me with my accent all the time, so its another case of pulling the wool over, I’m sure us Aussies have been pulling the same trick for some time now around the world.  it can get you far, though not if your at starbucks and they can’t understand you.  Not going to get far then.

The hard part about ringing and asking for permission is that when you live with the person, its really hard to get the phone at a time that will work to ask.  particularly when you have to time it around morning or afternoon because of the time zone changes.  The other hard part is trying to subtly get their phone numbers from your other half so that you can make the call when they aren’t about.  I ended up getting the phone numbers by luck because we were expecting a package to be delivered and I suggested it would be good if i had the number sin my phone in case i needed to call and confirm details.   After that the only venue left was work, which was achieved with use of an empty boardroom at 8am in the morning.

The weirdest part of doing this is the fact you can’t tell anyone afterwards!  So your walking around the office proud as punch, very excited, and your got this dirty big secret and you can’t tell a dam soul.  That was a strange day.  I think I went all out and took an extra 15 minutes for lunch and got myself a coffee (if you know me, its big!).  I’m sure someone picked up on my mood somewhere, because it would seem every packet of poo type job that people had and wanted to offload was offered to me on the day.  Unfortunately the next day the jobs were still there…

The Big Event

The big event was another confusing thing for me.  Do you spend everything on the ring or save some for a grand gesture big event style proposal?  It was a conundrum…  one little moment in time for the thing you see for ever.  I took a poll of the female lawyers in my office.  There was general consensus that the event had to be a good one as well.  And I do accept that now with my 20/20 past vision.  I mean, its the question every asks isn’t it – how did he propose?  and well bugger them feeling like a fool when they have to say “in the car before hoping out for work” think about how you look gentlemen – you look like a right boob.  Of all the times to go in low and under the radar this isn’t the time.  People will judge you forever based on this one little moment in time!  Carpe Diem!

I admit I think there is a balance to be had…  the 60foot hummer screams overcompensating, people are just going to come to the wrong conclusion on that one.

Colorado Rustic

There is a whole blog in this heading.  A whole blog – a whole TV series for that matter.  And there is an Ally Mcbeal followup to the Practice on it with the MQT – the Megan, Quality, Test.   Its a fickle little beast the MQT, but an endearing one once you know its ideas write cheques that it just doesn’t want to cash when its there with the rustic all about it.  It just looks at it and goes ….. “computer says nooooo”.

Colorado Rustic really is like anywhere rustic when your just that little out of town and there are mum and pop operations running a place and they have a different QT then your QT, or the MQT.  The MQT is very much a  Mini, or BMW style QT,  this aint your Holden ute at the B&S ball QT.

So Colorado Rustic was ruled out after a day of looking around online and wondering if they tart up the photos on the web how bad can it be when your there (never did go to find out).  So I went city all the way.

Brown Palace

Two nights at the Brown Palace in downtown Denver staying on their top floor in a “top of the Brown” with couples massages, 7 course dinner, Room prepared whilst at the massages so that its full of rose petals with a table in the corner covered in candy, chocolate and red-velvet cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting and decoy presents.

Did I mention it was Valentines Day as well?