Sunday, November 14, 2010

A Loving Budget - Venue Selection Troubles

As you know from my previous guest list post, I LOVE spreadsheets! Although the day we finalized our guest count I was cursing Excel.

We had reviewed my pre-list of over 30 places (that list was vetted from all of the sites within a 2hr radius of my house:-)).  We had narrowed it down to our favorite eight, and our "back-up" fifteen.  We had also considered having it Mr. T's brother and SIL place.  All of these went out the window.  None would now work, either for budgetary or space limitations.

I had run an estimated budget for 100 guests.  When the list was finalized our count was MUCH higher; 185 invited, 150 expected (estimated) to attend.  Now that we were going to have more people, all the numbers changed. 50% increase people! 

We are paying for the majority of the wedding ourselves, with a little help from my family.  We also have no interest in going into debt for one day of celebration (no matter how awesome it is going to be!).

We went back to the drawing board and started from scratch.  I had already been thinking "out-of-the-box".  Now I went really out of my comfort zone (insert freak-out moment here!).  I am very organized when it comes to party planning, and not knowing where we were going to get married was very stressful for me.  It was the only time during the whole planning process so far that Mr. T told me that I needed to "chill out". (Reason #497 I'm marrying that man!)

I looked at out of the way places, parks, etc..  Then, in a "what the heck, might as well" moment I called one of our favorite restaurants that does weddings.  We were ecstatic!  It seemed that they were totally in our budget.  I ran a comparison sheet of what would work out of our new options and we found that we could do a ceremony, followed by a lunch reception at La Provence, cheaper than any of our other options.

Did any of you have to change gears drastically when it came to your venue?  It turned out great for us; how did it turn out for you?

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