I guess I can finally update the wedding news. Tim and I now have a date! We will be getting married April 12, 2015 in Norfolk, VA.
When one of my best friends, Theresa, sent me photos of an absolute stunning venue down there….I just knew that was the venue for me. Unfotatenly after multiple emails and a phone call or two, I was unable to get into contact with anyone. I thought maybe they were closed for good.
So two weeks ago Tim and I decided to look at other venues. They were okay but as I said previously said they weren’t for me. I wanted something big and open and they were closed and dark. Not dark in a bad way but darker than I wanted. Since one of the venues was close to my dream venue I walked over and looked from the outside in. My dream venue was closed but I knew just looking at the venue it was the one for me.
The only good thing about that wedding venue tour day (aside from knowing the previous two were not for me) was that I met and loved our wedding planner Hannah. She is down to earth, casual, relaxed and was already willing to help.
And help she did. She was able to get more information about the venue I wanted as well as other comprable and most similar options.
So last week I (Tim was away) went and toured the venue of my dreams. I loved it. I loved everything about it and there was nothing I didn’t like. After finding a date in our range we committed to it. So we do have a venue and a date.
So now we currently have:
Date: April 12, 2015
A venue in Norfolk, VA
Photographer: Justice Photography (They took some photos of me last January and I loved them).
A Wedding Planner: Hannah Hildabrandt Events
A Rough Outline of a Guest List (100-130 guests)
I guess you could say it’s coming along quite nicely and I’m actually excited to keep planning. I’m not excited to try on wedding dress…maybe I’ll just wear runderwear.
Questions for you:
If you are married, how many people did you have at your wedding?
In one sentence tell your dream wedding.
Mine is in a big open facility facing the water.
I am so excited! You will be a beautiful bride at a fantastic venue!
Congrats on finding a place! I hope everything else falls into place easily for you now 🙂
I think we invited around 100 and ended up with about 83-85 people, including myself and my husband. A guest list of 100-130 sounds great. The majority of our guests were family or close family friend’s. We only invited about a handful (literally, about 5) of friends our age – our closest friends were in our wedding party (5 bridesmaids 5 groomsmen) so there were only a few others outside of our family we really felt strongly about having there. It was small and intimate and perfect.
Congrats! Such a relief when you have the big stuff out of the way (for me it was incentive to then do zero wedding planning until 3 months before haha). I had 34 guests at my wedding which was perfect for us, my ideal was a destination wedding, somewhere we could have the venue to ourselves the whole week as accommodation for family and friends attending, and someplace where the scenery did all the work and I wouldn’t need more than a tiny bit of decor.
A destination wedding sounds so lovely!
Oh, that sounds excited!!! I would looooove to have got married outdoors; however, the weather in Montreal is so unpredictable, so we had to go for a hall. We had almost 170 guests at our wedding. I know, it sounds a lot. But get this, my hubby is Italian, so we had to actually cut down the number of people on his side, we pretty much stuck to the closest family. As to my side, well, given that 9 years ago I moved here with my family, I had only 4 people. Yup, that wasn’t a typo 4: my mom, dad, brother and grandmother (who thankfully were able to fly in to Canada). Enjoy all the planning!!! xoxo Olena
exciting***
Love hearing about the progress – I am always a hopeless romantic, love weddings and baby pictures and all of that stuff that has meant so much to me through the years!
We had about 150 people at our wedding, and as we have looked back it is clear that many of the people were really not there for us, but for someone else – my parents, Lisa’s parents, whatever.
We were up on Lake George, and it was a gorgeous day. We are hoping to renew our vows in a couple of years for our 25th, but since both boys will be in college it might be a smaller affair than we imagined years ago 🙂 So long as Lisa is there by my side, I really don’t care 🙂
Enjoy!
I’ve heard Lake George is absolutely stunning. I am the same way, I love to read and hear about other people and their weddings and life events!
Its so exciting that you have a date! The time between now and the big day will fly by:)
We ended up inviting about 150 people to our wedding, and I think about 125 ended up coming.
Congrats on finding your perfect venue.
We had a courthouse wedding but I married my best friend and after 14 years I don’t regret it one little bit.
That is fabulous! I think having a wedding is meaningful to you is the most important. Only you look back think about it!
This is so exciting! That’ll be here before we know it.
I always wanted a small wedding at the WI Capitol then friends and family would come to a nice dinner on capitol square and bar hop around there. Alas, that probably won’t happen and it’ll be more ‘princessy’ but that’s alright too 😉
Very exciting!!! Yay!
I think we had 132 (invited 153). Honestly, my dream wedding was the one I had. Nothing really mattered except the person I was kissing at the end of the ceremony.
That’s how I feel too! I think I’ll be pretty happy with everything. I only hope we can get on y’all cupcake and dessert level!
Glad to read this! Yeah, getting the venue and the date first are the biggest things! My wedding was pretty small, maybe 40ish people, but all of them were meaningful people to me so I liked having them there. I didn’t invite coworkers or friends except very close friends. We wanted to keep it small and fairly inexpensive since Clay was still in school at the time.
YAY! That is so exciting!
So exciting! I’m glad you have a date and so much planning done! Congrats!
Our wedding was small (45 people) but it was perfect- and definitely our dream wedding!
Congratulations on deciding on a venue and date! I remember that was particularly difficult during the planning process. I had to have the ocean involved in some way, and the city I am from is super expensive to get married in, so there was a lot of compromise and bargaining… but it worked out. We ended up having about 35 people there, and it was perfect.
How exciting!!!
My wedding was small – 85ish people.
If there is a wedding #2, it will be even smaller. Maybe 10-15 people. It’ll be my dream wedding on the beach. Nothing big and fancy as I don’t enjoy being the center of attention
How exciting! When you first start planning for a wedding it all snowballs, then there’s a lull of several months before it starts getting crazy busy again! Our wedding is in just over 6 weeks time and we’re back in the snowballing stage right now! We invited 88 guests to our wedding, but I think about 70 people will make it on the day. British weddings always seem to be much smaller affairs than in America though.
Exciting stuff! You could always get a dress for the ceremony and then wear runderwear for the reception. Just saying. 🙂
I just had my absolute dream of a wedding 🙂
Aw you’re so cute. Congrats!
Congrats! We’re close to nailing down a date and it’s nice to know things are getting closer and moving along! I can’t wait to hear more about that venue 🙂
YAY! And I was NOT excited about wedding dresses either! I thought the whole thing was a pain in the ass, which is probably why I picked something on the second trip. We only ended up having 64 or so show up, which I was really happy about. It still felt like I didn’t get to talk to people as much as I would have liked but it worked out pretty well! I was satisfied!
I would like a smaller wedding, I just don’t see that happening. HA!
It’s so hard to have a small wedding! Once you start listing a handful of people, you suddenly have like 100 on your list. It’s crazy!
Awwr! I’m super happy for you, Hollie 😀 I actually have no idea what my dream wedding would be like. I used to think I wanted something huge and elaborate, but now I think I’d prefer something smaller and a lot more intimate. Maybe even a destination wedding with only close family and friends.
Nice one buddy- If you need a wedding singer, give me a call. I’ll whip my hair back n forth better than Willow Smith.
Your wedding planning is going great! You’re already ahead of the curve for most things. It’ll be easy going now since you’ve got the big stuff out of the way. I’m super excited to see how everything turns out!
You have no idea how giddy I was reading this. I LOVE WEDDINGS!! Congrats to you!!
I love hearing your wedding updates! and that is a big deal to find the venue. I have always wanted to get married outside
That is exciting! My husband and I looked at two venues. The first we looked at was what we thought would be our dream location, but they’d just gotten new ownership and it was equipped for bigger weddings. We only invited just over 100 people and I think we ended up with 60-80 actually attending.
congrats!!!! Sooo exciting.
I’m so excited that things are moving along for you! That is awesome! Don’t you feel so accomplished? Like a huge weight has been lifted?
So exciting! We had about 100 guests and it was small, intimate and exactly what we envisioned. 🙂
enjoy wedding planning it is so much fun!! Don’t stress about things and enjoy the time together. It goes all too fast!