We Did It: The Location

Choosing the location was the hardest thing we've had to do in wedding planning thus far. The conundrum is as follows: my family lives in Cleveland, where I grew up and think of fondly, and Ben's family lives in St. Louis, which he LOVES with every fiber of his being. We live outside of Oklahoma City - that's 8 hours from St. Louis and 17 hours from Cleveland. Having just finished graduate school, many of our friends live in our city, but Ben has a good amount in Missouri too. I have literally 2 friends who live in Cleveland. More than 80% of Ben's extended family lives in St. Louis; probably 1/3 of mine lives in Ohio. Are you catching the pattern here? St. Louis should have been an obvious choice, but it wasn't. Family finances, aging grandparents (on both sides), personal traveling constraints, and societal expectations ("it's supposed to be in the Bride's hometown"... yeah, and my father is supposed to trade me for livestock) made the decision especially agonizing. In the end we picked what was easiest for the greatest number of people, including ourselves. We plan to have a second reception, casual pot-luck style, in Cleveland over the holidays. I'm sorry, Lake Erie. I still love you.

Once we knew St. Louis was the most logistical choice - and Ben and I are extremely pragmatic people, so we like logistics - we had to select a venue. Our requirements were as follows: ceremony and reception have to be in the same place, no banquet halls, freedom to customize, and room rental for no more than $1000. A park setting would have been ideal for these constraints, but as meteorologists we are skeptical that the weather will just magically cooperate because it's our wedding day. Knowing we wanted a beautiful, non-suburban venue, our options had to be a little unconventional. More often than not, a Friday or Sunday wedding at a traditional wedding venue is far less expensive than the more sought-after Saturday. We also knew that going with a place that doesn't normally cater to weddings can save you major cash, as can finding a location that will allow you to bring in your own alcohol (unfortunately these are hard to come by in some cities). Thus, I set up appointments at two St. Louis venues: Plush, a concert hall with a penthouse and the 9th Street Abbey, a catering company's renovated church used for special events.

Ultimately, we chose the latter. We loved the ability to use the same beautiful indoor space for both ceremony and reception (see above), the price we could attain on a Sunday, and the professionalism that the amazing sales representatives at Patty Long Catering had already shown me in my partially insane* pre-engaged research. As an out-of-town couple, we felt more comfortable leaving the tough stuff to the professionals, even if it meant dedicating more of our budget to venue/catering than we had hoped. It took us a few days to pull off the band-aid and accept that the catering bill will be more expensive than anything either of us have ever purchased, but we are confident about our choice and feel extremely lucky to be able to get married and celebrate in such a beautiful place.

* I should clarify that doing research before a formal engagement is not actually insane; I was just a little....dedicated.... for the depth in which I did it. Always do what works for you and your fiance! As I mentioned, Ben and I are methodical people. We were both going to be in our respective hometowns for different parts of the Christmas holiday, and felt that it was necessary to check out some venues while in town (knowing that we would not be back for several months but were getting engaged in the near future). We got some strange looks and inquiries, but guess what? We were prepared to make major decisions and deposits a few weeks into our engagement, and everything has quieted into a peaceful planning lull since then. Total Wedding Zen.