In the last post, I talked about some of our initial choices when it came to venues, and the ones we quickly took off this list. Now I'll go into more detail with the locations we actually went to see, and our thoughts on each.
Before going on our EMoon (post still to come on that!), I knew I wanted to schedule visits with venues so we could hit the ground running as soon as we were back. Scheduling the visits in the first place was complicated enough. Our work schedules aren't exactly user friendly for normal business hours, and we were trying to fit in 5 places in 2 different states in a day and a half. To add to the confusion, I really wanted to meet with a couple of caterers also. A number of the venues we were looking at allow you to bring in the caterer of your choice...so we thought it was important to have an understanding of caterers in order to fully understand and compare costs. In any case! I worked like a crazy person making phone calls and setting up appointments and managed the following schedule:
Monday AM:
-Eugene O'Neill Theater
-Guilford Yacht Club
Thursday:
-A Thyme to Cook
-Mystic Seaport
-Branford House
-Narragansett Towers
We weren't able to make appointments with two of the caterers in person, it was too difficult...so instead I was able to get rough proposals from both West Bay Gourmet & Coastal Gourmet to get some comparisons.
Monday morning our first meeting was with Eugene O'Neill Theater. We met with Jillian their rental coordinator. Eugene O'Neill is in Waterford, CT and sits right next to Harkness State Park, with a beautiful view of the water. Their primary rental space is the Sunken Garden, where you can hold tented receptions. Since the theater is primarily just that, a theater, they do not provide anything besides the space. You bring in catering, rentals, etc. etc...The Sunken Garden rental fee is $2,500. They also have the Sea Porch which you can rent for $750, as a cocktail hour location. At first I really liked the idea of a totally blank slate - so when we left I immediately picked up the phone and called a rental company to get a quote. The basic quote I got for rentals was over $6,000...WAY higher than my naive self realized. That took this option, which I thought was going to be budget friendly with it's low site fee, up into the realm of pricey. That also didn't include rentals such as bathrooms...and the space didn't offer a whole lot of backup options if the weather was bad.
Our next stop was the Guilford Yacht Club. I wasn't so sure the Guilford Yacht Club was going to be what we wanted, but it had too much potential sentimental meaning to not give it a shot! A. It is in Guilford, so it would give us the opportunity to get married in our home town....and B. You can see it from where Ant proposed!! The GYC had a few things that were reallyyyyy tempting, especially after just seeing the totally DIY option at Eugene O'Neill....really fancy things like bathrooms, and indoor backup options for cocktail hour and ceremony in case it rained. Things I hadn't even thought about before! We like to think that the summer will have nice weather, but we can't bank on that...and need to be realistic about options for inclement weather. The GYC certainly had that. However, GYC also has an exclusive caterer. With a site fee of $5,000 in addition to the lack of flexibility with catering, it didn't seem likely it would fall within our budget. I also wasn't sure it was the feel we wanted. It was beautiful! but a little too clean & simple. I had a very specific image in my head of what our wedding would look and feel like, and this didn't quite match. But we had Day 1 of the search done, and a lot of things to talk about....
This picture was taken from where Ant proposed - see the GYC on the right?? Gorgeous!
Thursday we got up early and actually started our day with a stop at A Thyme to Cook catering in North Stonington, CT. When we walked up the building there was a chalkboard sign on the door that said "Welcome to a Thyme to Cook Rachel & Anthony" - which was adorable...and I was mad I never took a picture. We walked in directly into the kitchen where this wonderfully friendly woman cooking AMAZING looking food welcomed us and pointed us in the right direction. We met with Lauren, and spent about an hour talking about all things wedding! We explained what we envisioned dinner looking like (details to come later) and chatted about food we liked, and didn't like. For example: Ant needs to have olive tapenade at this wedding (???)...and the food he doesn't like includes things like tarter sauce. He has strange requests, but he knows what he likes! Let's be honest, as long as theres dessert, I'm going to be a happy camper. She took lots of notes and was going to send us a proposal within the week!
Our next stop was Mystic Seaport. At the Seaport we were going to check out two different areas for receptions: The River Room and the Boat Shed. The River Room was a pretty standard event room that can hold up to 200 people. It has a beautiful outdoor patio area for cocktail hour that comes with a Sperry Tent. If you are going to use the River Room for your reception, you can also rent the North Lawn for your ceremony. The North Lawn sits right on the water in front of the River Room's patio, with a beautiful view of the Mystic River. The River Room has a Friday minimum of $10,000 and a Saturday minimum of $15,000. If you meet these food and beverage minimums than there is not an additional site fee. You can rent the North Lawn for the ceremony for $2,500......which is pretty high for just the ceremony site. The River Room did not really impress me, it had a very "standard" wedding feel which I did not love, but the patio and North Lawn were beautifullllllllll so I thought I might be able to get past that. Also, there was an exclusive caterer, but they are a caterer that we've used before and loved, so again - I thought MAYBE we could ignore our initial feelings about all inclusive venues....but I wasn't sure.
The Boat Shed is an open air pavilion that can also be used for receptions, and has a MUCH more casual but romantic feel. I had been to a clambake at the Boat Shed years ago when my dad was involved in hosting a big conference in the area, so I knew it was a beautiful space. The Boat Shed has a food and beverage minimum of $6,000 on Fridays and $12,000 on Saturdays....but the Boat Shed doesn't include tables/chairs/etc...you have to rent all of those. Again - an option that I thought might be more budget friendly initially - the representative from the Seaport told us that by the time you're done receptions at the Boat Shed usually end up costing more than the River Room. The biggest problem with the Boat Shed was that events can only go from 6pm to 10pm. 10pm is WAY too early for our wedding to end, so that made it unlikely that we would end up choosing the Boat Shed as our venue. The space, however, was so unique we couldn't pass up the opportunity to check it out!
Our next stop was the Branford House. The Branford House is on UConn's Avery Pt Campus in Groton, CT. Ant and I were very familiar with the Branford House in general, since my dad works on campus as the director at Project Oceanology. The building is drop dead gorgeous, with stunning views of Long Island Sound. The huge front lawn allows for room for the ceremony, and then you can move to the patio for cocktail hour, before heading inside for the reception. The Branford House has a site fee of $4,500 with includes tables and chairs, and they allow you to bring in any caterer you want (BIG win!). They had no Saturdays available next summer, but did have 6 Fridays. There were two things that initially concerned me about the Branford House: 1, the set up of the space. The inside of the Branford House is split up into three rooms, which could make it a big disjointed...and 2: the intricate dark carved walls. I envisioned our wedding being a light, simple summer event, and I wasn't sure if the dark walls were a bit too fancy for the feel we were going for.
Our last stop was the Towers in Narragansett. The Towers are another unique space for wedding receptions...and the only place we ended up seriously considering in RI. You can have your ceremony and cocktail hour on the courtyard outside, and move inside for the reception. The Towers can fit 180 for a seated reception, which fit into our required capacity. The site fee for a Saturday is $2,800 and $2,100 for a Friday, but that does not include rentals for tables and chairs. The cost for the courtyard for the ceremony is $225. They have a list of pre-approved caterers, but the list has 18 different options so we did not consider that an issue...there were enough to choose from that we would have plenty of options budget wise. While I love the idea of getting married in RI, Narragansett is pretty far from where we live in Guilford, and wouldn't be the most convenient when it comes to planning.
After our last meeting at the Towers, Ant and I enjoyed a drink at the Coast Guard House to celebrate successfully finishing our venue search!!! We were feeling really good about what we had seen, and were both on the same page about where we wanted to have our wedding!
Can you guess where we chose?? Very soon I will write a full post on our top (and ultimately final) pick describing all the breathtakingly beautiful details that made us decide we couldn't possible get married anywhere else!
