to make up for yesterday’s debacle…

I found some more pretties for you! Via Southern Weddings, please to feast your eyes on these g.o.r.g.e.o.u.s shots from an elopment session (!!) at an Atlanta carnival.

The color in these shots is simply amazing!

Hurray for Ferris wheels — and check out the rad color-coordination between the bride’s dress and the ride! So coincidentally spectacular! you should know that yellow+green is one of my all-time favorite color combinations, so i am fanning myself over here at not only the gorgeousness of these pictures but also the bride’s darling (and tea-length!) yellow+green dress.

This shot is just so calming and sweet. Happy, peaceful, in love. There’s a very similar scene at Glen Echo, too, so i may be forced to recreate this darling shot at our wedding.

And, as usual, i saved the very best for last. Check it out — a kiss on the carousel!!

All shots courtesy of the marvelous Jessica from jessica purvis photography. Click and love!

Read Full Post »

mid-week inspiration

Now that you’ve seen my gorgeous venue, i have a little inspiration to share — and some advice to seek! Check out these gorgeous photos of Glen Echo back when it was a functioning amusement park:

I love this adorable couple watching the rides.

Roller coaster!

“Pennyland,” and an awesome airplane ride.

I particularly love this shot of the park’s streetcar entrance.

Look how crazy busy and awesome the Crystal Pool was back in the day.

Coaster Dips! At night!

These and many other fabulously awesome shots can be found at the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project. It’s an online clearinghouse for “written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.” It’s also incredibly cool, and i highly recommend it the next time you’re cruising around online in need of inspiration.

So, given those awesome shots, and the many more available online, my question is this: Do i print these out, find some funky frames, and use them as my table numbers? I love the idea of giving our guests a taste of the rich history of Glen Echo, and i think these pictures are gorgeous and fascinating and would be fun to look at, all scattered around the joint. What do you think?

…and as a bonus, here’s a shot of the Bumper Car Pavilion itself circa 1928, complete with zooming, action-style bumper cars!!

(image source — thanks, Shorpy!)

Read Full Post »

decor dilemma: audience participation edition

So, here’s where we are now. We have the world’s coolest wedding and reception venue. We’ve booked most of our vendors already (and i promise to tell you all about them soon!). But one big question remains — nay, looms:

How on earth will we decorate this awesome space??

As of right this minute, we’re still in the figuring-out-how-we-want-it-all-to-look stage. But that doesn’t mean i haven’t come across tons of gorgeous, cool, quirky, and intriguing ideas. I figured, what better way to sort out how to best go about dressing up this already-gorgeous space than to write about and get input from all of you?

And so, herewith allow me to present to you my first flash of decorating inspiration: GIANT ROUND WHITE BALLOONS!!

Look! Big, puffy, perfectly round white balloons! (via OnceWed)

Martha’s gotten in on the action a couple of times. The first pic below is a gorgeous shot from her “50 Tips for the Perfect Reception.” The second is taken from her fabulous April 2008 Martha Stewart Weddings article “Glamour on a Budget“:

I absolutely love how the gold and white balloons give the room such a festive air, yet still manage to create a sense of playfulness in the venue. And the all-white balloons on the left just look so … elegant. Balloons. Looking elegant. I love it!

I saved the best for last. If you read design or wedding blogs at all, i’m sure you’ll have come across Amy Atlas Events. She specializes in designing high-end, high-concept dessert bars for weddings and other fabulous parties. Allow me to present to you the picture that began this dream of mine:

Isn’t that just simply dreamy? Shades of ivory and white, set off by simple vases of hydrangeas, and BALLOONS?!! Oh, swoon. I absolutely adore this picture. I adore the serenity and grace it evokes, without losing a certain playfulness and light-hearted celebratory feeling. I love the ginormity of the balloons, and i particularly love that it captures, for me, a vintage-y vibe without looking like a set decoration from a 1950’s party. That’s exactly the setting i want to create: retro, beautiful, a little glamorous, and a lot playful and fun.

So, lovely readers, what do you think? Can my giant round white balloon vision be realized? Am i headed down the right path in dreaming up decorations? As a quick reminder, here’s a picture of the Bumper Car Pavilion during daytime:

(via WikiMedia Commons)

And at night:

(via JitterBuzz)

So,  have at it. White balloons or no white balloons? If you have an even more awesome idea, please share!!

Read Full Post »

our awesome venue: the reception

So, after an unplanned wee break from blogging, i’m back with details of where at our radical venue we’ll be having the reception. Behold: the Bumper Car Pavilion!

This is the actual pavilion where recreation-seekers of yore actually crashed bumper cars into each other! There aren’t any actual bumper cars left in the space (which, honestly, is kind of a bummer :-), but it’s got its original signage/artwork over the front of the pavilion, along with wooden floors, open sides, and a stage!

Check out the inside, with all the yummy light streaming in! You can also see the christmas lights wrapped around the beams in the ceiling, and the clear plastic sides, which are currently in the rolled-up position. They can easily be rolled down in cases of torrential rain or freezing coldness (both of which i’m hoping to avoid — but DC weather in September can be unpredictable). The white gates lining the pavilion also swing open to welcome you inside, and the benches are all (re)movable. The stage is located just on the other side of the opening in the right, above; this shot was taken leaning over a white gate just about halfway down the front of the pavilion.

Here’s one more shot, taken from the side of the Cuddle Up Pavilion. In this one you can see the gorgeous swooping roof line of the pavilion — it’s lined with big old-school bulbs that light up at night! See?

So gorgeous! So bright and sparkly! So festive! I can’t wait!!

(last image source)

Read Full Post »

the great venue hunt 2008, part awesome

I’ve kept you waiting. I know. But the venue of your dreams doesn’t come along every day. Or every month. As Joe can attest, sometimes the venue of your dreams comes only after you’ve personally inspected at least ten places, made more than 30 phone calls, studied spreadsheets, and made list after scratched-up notebook-paper list of pros, cons, prices, and details. Seriously, i have an encyclopedic knowledge of DC-area venues that will allow you to serve red wine. Hee.

But that’s not why you’re here. Fair enough. And at long last! Joe and i are getting married at GLEN ECHO PARK!!

Y’all, this place is the coolest venue ever. I do not exaggerate. It was built in the late 19th century as a Chautauqua Assembly (like an “educational summer camp” for grown-ups) and developed in the early 20th century into a trolley park — an amusement park that folks from the city could come to by taking the super-newfangled trolley car. At its height, Glen Echo had a roller coaster, a shooting gallery, a tilt-a-whirl, and a carousel. It also had a ginormous pool, complete with diving well and sandy beach, and a huge airy ballroom where Glenn Miller once played to packed houses. The park was shut down in the late 1960s and almost got knocked down (and destroyed by neglect), but it was saved and restored in the 1990s to its current state as an arts facility. Most of the rides are gone now, but the carousel is still fully functional, and the park’s old Art Deco architecture and neon signs have been restored.

See? Carousel!!

Several venues are available for wedding ceremonies at Glen Echo, but we knew on sight that we had to get married here:

The Cuddle Up Pavilion! Seriously, does it get any more adorable than that?! The window you see in the middle of the red column is where tickets were collected for the “Cuddle Up,” which used to be Glen Echo’s tilt-a-whirl ride. Hee!! The pavilion is open-air on the sides but has an oval roof and a stage at one end, where we will have our ceremony. Here’s what it looks like from on stage:

(Please to ignore the random orange cone.) We’ll put a skirt around the stage so the rebar’s not showing, and although the bleachers are neat (can you see the bleachers in the back?), we’ll push them back to the edge of the space and let them mark the back end of the aisle. We’re getting simple white wooden folding chairs from our caterer and will put them in rows of 10, five on each side of the aisle, with some simple aisle markers (which i will save for a later post). We’ll put some flowers on the stage to mark the ceremony space, too, but otherwise, it’s just Joe, me, our officiant, and the offbeat awesomeness of getting married inside what was once a carnival ride!

Check back for more about the awesomest venue ever, and where we’ll be having our reception (i’ll tell you, it’s even cooler than the Cuddle Up). Pictures galore!

Read Full Post »

the great venue hunt 2008 (almost final edition)

As promised, i am back to deliver you with the last venue we didn’t pick for our wedding. I actually saw this place on the same day we found our venue, so my memory is just a little clouded by the awesomeness of the evening, but i’ll tell you all i can remember about The Arts Club of Washington.

This venue is in the heart of DC as well, at 2017 I Street NW (between 20th and 21st). The gorgeous townhouse was once President Monroe’s executive offices, and it gives off a very historic vibe — combined with a bit of offbeat funkiness. There are both indoor and outdoor spaces; they recommend that you have your ceremony and meal outside in their lovely, private brick courtyard, with the cocktail hour and dancing inside in the historic space. Here’s the garden in its natural (i.e., un-set-up) state:

With chairs set in rows for a ceremony:

And with happy celebrating guests and wedding party!

The staff can also accomodate your event inside, if you’d prefer, although setting the rooms for dinner breaks up the flow somewhat. There’s a big dining room in which most of the action would happen, and they can place tables both upstairs and in the performance room if you need them. …did i say performance room? This room is long and kind of narrow but has a beautiful wooden floor and an honest-to-goodness stage in the back, perfect for a DJ or band. And if it’s raining, you can have your ceremony in there as well. Check it out:

When i dropped by to visit the Arts Club, i did it with no advance warning or appointment. I found the house steward to be extremely gracious and knowledgeable, and i even got to chat with the chef, Brennan Hurley, for a good five or ten minutes. He didn’t blink when i told him about our rather nontraditional ideas for a wedding feast. (He even got excited about the possibility of waffles!)

I also found that the prices were reasonable for the area — a $3000 site fee for four hours, not including set-up or clean-up (for which they don’t charge you extra). Catering starts at $70pp, and they do open bar as well (although you can’t bring in your own alcohol, which is kind of a bummer). They estimate $25pp for a full open bar, and the chef told me they don’t differentiate between beer and liquor, so you can offer guests the option of mixed drinks (or, if you’re like Joe, whiskey neat) without worrying about jacking up the price.

All in all, i was really pleased with the Arts Club and would recommend them for someone looking for a convenient, historical, downtown DC location with a little bit of quirky thrown in. (It IS an art museum, so you can bet on some cool, beautiful, or just weird stuff on the walls!)

Read Full Post »

the great venue hunt 2008 (part III)

I promise i’m getting close to revealing my awesome, gorgeous, super-fantastic venue. But first, there are two more places i want to tell you about. Both of these venues were in our Top Three, and it would have been hard to pick between them had we not discovered the place we booked.

First, allow me to present to you the WVSA ARTS Connection! The WVSA is located at 16th & L Streets NW, right in the heart of Washington. The organization runs a charter school and nonprofit dedicated to helping children with special needs learn in an alternative setting — they focus on using art as a method of communication for kids who have difficulty expressing themselves. Awesome, right? The building is an old Victorian townhouse with a gallery on the main floor and an event space on the top floor that’s half-enclosed, half-outdoor (although i believe they’ve put a roof over the terrace recently). Here’s the upstairs space, called the “Top of the ART”:

The coolest thing about this space is that it’s both indoors AND outdoors — you can have the meal served al fresco, and then intice everyone inside after dinner for cupcakes and dancing. Also, the photos above don’t do it justice, but the room is on the end of the building and gets lots of lovely light from windows on two sides. Plus, the floors are gleaming hardwood, which just look so welcoming and homey to me. They’ll work with you, too, if you want to have nifty extras like a Wii or board games set up. The rental fee also includes school-type chairs and tables, so if you’ve got a vintage school theme going (like this adorable couple), then you’re all set.

If you’d prefer having the ceremony and reception in the same place, you can actually get married in the gallery on the main floor. It’s a beautiful, open space with soothing light-grey walls and hardwood floors, and the art is rotated regularly. (This can be exciting, if you’d like an element of the unknown!) Here’s a shot of the gallery:

LOVE the floor.

The contact person for rentals is Mary Sellers, and i found her to be both knowledgeable and responsive when i e-mailed with questions. The WVSA will allow the caterer of your choice, but there’s no caterer’s kitchen, and no open flames are allowed. (This was a bummer when we were looking at omelet stations!) The fee for the gallery and Top of the ART is $2800 — a steal for downtown DC!

Read Full Post »

the great venue hunt 2008 (part II)

So, with the Sewall-Belmont House out, i hit the Internet again. This time i was looking for a place that would definitely hold our (rapidly swelling) guest list for both a ceremony and a reception. After having learned about the complications of catering at a place with no real kitchen facilities (and reading about how much caterers charge!), i switched the focus to more inclusive venues.

Enter the City Club at Franklin Square. I found this place on the DC Knot Boards, i think, and it has an awful lot to recommend it. The City Club is a private club that’s closed on weekends; they only book one event a day, so you know you’re not going to be crashing somebody else’s wedding if you show up early to get ready. There’s a site fee and a $6,000 minimum for food (not including a service charge and tax), but that amount includes hors d’oeuvres, dinner, an open bar for the reception, AND wine at dinner. The fee allows you access to the site ALL DAY, which is pretty awesome, and they have separate rooms you can use as a bridal suite, a gift room, and a kids’ room (complete with DVD player).

The City Club shares a building with several offices and, like, a convenience store, which is both good and bad. It’s good because you get to have your ceremony in this gorgeous space they call the Atrium (which is the lobby for the whole building, not just the City Club). The walls are beautiful, and the floor kills me with its awesomeness. If you’re looking for a more formal ceremony, this is a great space, with the tall columns, too. However, the aforementioned door to the convenience store opens directly into the Atrium, so you have to put up a screen to cover the views of coffee stands and Fritos displays. There are also giant screens at either end of the Atrium that host ads and office-locator-thingys; they’re turned off on the weekends, as i understand, but it was recommended that you get screens to place in front of them so as not to have guests wondering why you’re featuring giant LCD screens at either end of your aisle.

The dinner is also held in the Atrium, which is flipped from ceremony to dining set-up during the cocktail hour. Usually the Parkview Room inside the club is the room you’d go with for cocktails; it looks fairly formal and traditional, with heavy chairs and dramatic doors. The wall on the right is mostly windows, if memory serves, which look over Franklin Square. It’s lovely, but it has a very masculine feel, if that makes sense. After you’ve had your cocktail hour in the Parkview Room, you move back out into the Atrium for dinner. While everyone is eating, they re-set the Parkview Room for after-dinner dancing, drinking, and assorted shenanigans.

Overall, the City Club at Franklin Square offered us the best value for the money, both in terms of actual dollars but also in perks like being able to come to the venue as early on the day as we wanted without worrying about paying extra or getting in anyone’s way. And Cassandra, the events manager, is completely fantastic. It just … didn’t feel like us. When we left, Joe turned to me in genuine surprise and said, “I didn’t think you wanted something so formal.” As it turns out, i really didn’t — we’re just not really formal people, and although i think A wedding would be beautiful (and thrifty!) at the City Club, it wasn’t right for OUR wedding.

Stay tuned … i promise only a few more posts until i show you where we ended up!

Read Full Post »

the great venue hunt 2008 (part I)

Once we’d decided we wanted to get married in the DC area, i began scouring the interwebs for possible locations. And let me tell you, you would be AMAZED at the sheer number of possible venues around here. I found sites ranging from $1,000 to well over $10,000 — just for a site fee!

I won’t bother with showing you all the places i fell in love with online, only to discover that they were (well) out of our budget. …well, okay, i’ll show you one. If you’ve got $10k to pony up for a site fee that doesn’t include flowers, catering, or alcohol, allow me to recommend Meridian House. The pictures on the website don’t really even do it justice. Holy cats, it’s beautiful! Wildly, ragingly expensive, but beautiful.

I digress. I’ll try to go through, in mostly chronological order, the venues we explored on the path to finding The One. First up: the Sewall-Belmont House. This place just oozes history, and it has special significance for me because it’s the headquarters of the National Woman’s Party and was the home base for much of the womens’ suffrage movement in the early twentieth century. I loved the idea of getting married in a historic building, and Sewall-Belmont’s history as a focal point for feminists really spoke to me. I was swooning before we even stepped foot in the building.

The building itself is beautiful: it’s one of the oldest houses on Capitol Hill and sits just a block away from the Library of Congress, at Constitution Ave & 2nd St NE. Although they won’t allow you to hold a ceremony inside (which was more or less the dealbreaker for us), they do have a permanent tent in the backyard, which is adjacent to an open-air brick terrace, which you reach through an interior terrace bordered by a series of lovely French doors. (Unfortunately i can’t seem to find any pictures of the back yard and tent, although the website i linked to above has pictures linked in .pdf format.) The venue is great on allowing you to use red wine, tomato sauce, candles (in votives), etc., but there is no caterer’s kitchen, so any food brought in would have to be prepared/cooked/etc. off-site.

The website will tell you that if you book the tent and both exterior and interior terraces, you can fit close to 200 people with dancing. Having toured the venue, however, i’d think that made for a pretty smooshed table set-up (as well as a bit fragmented, as the interior terrace is separated from the outside spaces by (openable) French doors). Regardless, though, the terraces could be used for a cocktail hour, as the dance floor, as a lounge area separate from the main celebration space — there are lots of possibilities, and the staff is very friendly. Although the Sewall-Belmont House didn’t work out for us, i do think it had loads of potential to be a very personal, meaningful, and beautiful venue for a smaller wedding and reception.

Read Full Post »

the very first decision we made

Even though i live in DC* now, i’m from North Carolina, and my entire family still lives there. Coincidentally, although he’s from West Virginia, Joe’s family is all in NC now too. So, naturally, everyone assumed that we’d come back to NC for the wedding, and i’d get married in my hometown.

Wrong.

Don’t get me wrong — i love North Carolina. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful state, and i grew up in a very lush, green, rural area that is simply lovely. And it would be incredibly convenient for my 50+ family members not to have to travel to get to the festivities. Plus, my family (on both sides) is very very traditional, so it didn’t really cross anyone’s mind that there was another option.

However. Joe and i met in DC; we both love DC; we both plan to live here for the foreseeable future and establish our married life here. Almost all of my friends, and many of Joe’s, are local to the area. Although it’s more expensive (like, by a factor of 10), there are also lots more quirky and unusual options up here, from venues to caterers to string quartets willing to play offbeat tunes (but those are all different posts). So we decided, very quickly, that we were getting married in DC.

With that decision made, our next stop was finding a venue. Expect many, many posts about the long journey from “we are getting married in DC! somewhere!” to finding and falling insanely head-over-heels for our venue. (Look up for a sneak peek at our heartthrob of a ceremony location.)

Have any of you decided on a venue far from your hometown and family? How did you handle it?

(*DC = the greater DC metro area. I live in Arlington, actually.)

Read Full Post »