...reception venue search...

Obviously an outdoor reception is a bit of a risk. What if it rains? What if it's sweltering? No one wants to be uncomfortable on their wedding day, and clearly, our quirky little picnic reception is SUPER dependent on fantastic weather. Thus began the search for a venue that offered the atmosphere of the outdoors without leaving us completely exposed.

The first venue I fell for was this fantastic pavilion at the Hermitage Golf Course.

Just enough cover to shelter us from the sun and rain if necessary. Still plenty of outdoorsy-ness to enjoy.

Beautiful area next to the pavilion where we could set up all of our lawn games.

We really liked this place. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too far out of our budget. The rental fee for the pavilion is $1,200, which I thought was pretty reasonable. However, because we are getting married at the height of wedding season, the venue requires a $5,000 spending minimum…which means we'd have to rent more space and spend much more than we'd budgeted for their in-house catering. My heart was a little sad, but we had to give up on the idea of doing our reception there.

Next came this beauty…The Patio at The Mill at Lebanon.

I loved the rustic, industrial sort of feel.

It holds about 150 people seated…which would have been a pretty tight squeeze for us. And the rental fee is $1,800 for the patio. Again, a bit of a stretch to our budget. I loved the atmosphere, but DG was convinced that it was too small anyway.

After we visited with The Mill, I was really discouraged. Don't get me wrong…it's a lovely venue. It just wasn't going to work for us. And I felt like we were running out of options. How in the world would we afford to pull off the wedding that we wanted? We put everything back on the table. Were we sure we wanted to do it in Nashville? Maybe we'd look into getting married in my hometown. Were we sure we had to have a fancy reception? Maybe we should just scrap the whole outdoorsy idea, take advantage of the free-ness of the venue where DG works, and compromise. I hated the idea of have a reception that feels like everyone else's, but it would still be "nice", right? So then I looked at DG and said, "What if we just bring the outside indoors?" The wheels started turning. What came next was a conversation that evolved over several days about just exactly how we'd pull this off. It will be different. It will be creative. It will be cleverly ironic. And it will be perfection. J I can't wait to elaborate on all of the design and lighting elements and all of the splendid little personal touches we've come up with. This is going to be the greatest reception ever…at least in our eyes. And that's what counts, right?

So, yeah. Venue? Check.