At Last

We have our first signed contract! Jakob & I made a trip to Estes Park last week. We signed our contract for our fabulous venue, Marys Lake Lodge, and put down a deposit. I feel unbelievably relieved. If nothing else is accomplished, we have a place to get married!


This is the site of our outdoor ceremony:

Naturally, there will be chairs and an aisle and all that jazz. Hopefully there will even be a bit of snow!


And our reception site:

I love the fireplace with double mantle. On the lower mantle we'll have candles, and the upper one will be decorated with flowers. This is the basic setup. For our reception, we will have ivory chair covers, not white and chair sashes to coordinate with our colors. We may even have colored table covers. Unfortunately, Marys Lake Lodge only has white chair covers and no chair sashes, but gave me the name of a rental company they use. Add another item to my list of "things to research".

My question for you today is this: How did you get from "what it is" to "what it could be" with your ceremony and/or reception site? Did you visualize it spontaneously or need inspiration?

And the Winner is . . .

Okay, so I promised to reveal the venue where we decided to have our wedding, and here it is.

This is the view from one of the balconies at Marys Lake Lodge, the place where we have decided to have our beautiful mountain wedding! It meets all of the requirements I talked. It's in Estes Park with views of the mountains (see? Mountains!) and nearby lodging, and catering is onsite. I cannot tell you how relived I am that we've finally made a decision and we're dealing with someone who acts like they want our business.
At this point in the planning process, I felt like we should have been sure about where our ceremony & reception would be held. And I almost gave myself an ulcer worrying about it not having one.