a big weekend!

So I'm rattling this off quickly, before slipping into my warm bed after a busy weekend...

Yesterday was a big day for us! It was the future hubby's first baseball game (which they won! 11-3), the future hubby's birthday celebrations (much fun was had!) and most importantly for a wedding-related blog - I handed over our contract for our venue!


Attempts were made to get a shot of me holding up our paperwork, outside our vevue. Apparently I looked like a school kid holding up an assembly award in every other shot...So this shot wins!!


Though this proves said attempts!

We had a lot of fun - I showed my MoH the reception room, then we and my little brother went for a wander and a play around the grounds. Annie took some great panoramic shots that I might share a bit later, and my brother took some gorgeous artsy shots in the grounds. There were lots of bees!

Love this shot of our Chapel (although not so much of me!):



We also found this gorgeous little corner of the grounds, that we're going to let the photographer know about - there's this gorgeous little brick bridge with a lovely old lamp post...and on the other side of it are a number of gorgeous trees (where unfortunately a couple were sitting so we couldn't really take any photos) that backs onto a lovely big field. I got quite excited imaging my future hubby and I sitting underneath them and the sunlight filtering through the leaves... *happy place*



All in all, we had a fun morning traipsing around the venue, only to return home for a very busy, but fun filled night and evening with my future hubby. Today (after the clean up from yesterday...still not completely finished mind you!) I have given my browser's "bookmark" area a work out, with the number of cool DIY projects I have found! Now to go through and cull...Will update soon on, but I think I've found our Save The Dates!!!

back to the venue

So. I feel like I have almost caught up now on what we have already done, wedding wise, and can start moving on to the bazillion ideas I have found while spending my time happily lost in wedding blog heaven.

But I feel like before I share some of the ideas that I have already fallen in love with and hope to use on our day, I should share a little more about our venue. As much as we love it, it has presented some issues!

Starting from the top, I guess I should start with the lovely Chapel. Do you remember it? Looks a little something like this:



Cute, quaint and almost barn-like inside, I fell in love with this little Chapel and when we walked inside it just felt *right*...

...Which is a problem. Mostly because the Catholic Church won't allow a priest to marry us there, when there are so many Churches in the local area. *cries*

All is not lost though. While my family is Catholic, the hubby to be's family are Christian. My family are quite happy with a Christian based ceremony, since they are really so similar. So now the hunt is on for a Christian priest who is able to marry us outside of a Church location. Luckily, my future sister-in-law has a family friend who is a retired priest. He was recently allowed to perform christenings for our nieces and nephew in my BIL/SIL's backyard. Hopefully (with all fingers crossed) he will be allowed to perform our wedding ceremony.

The problem is, the future hubby and I had to make a decision before signing our contract as to whether we would be booking the Chapel or not. BEFORE finding someone to marry us. By this stage, even though there are so many lovely local churches, we had fallen for the Chapel (and it's GORGEOUS view outside the window...hopefully more on that tomorrow!). So after much discussion, we have decided to book the Chapel and hope we can find a priest...otherwise we will be holding a civil ceremony, with Christian based readings, etc. It's not quite the same, but we had to come to a decision. As Catholic/Christians who don't regularly attend Church, it feels almost false to change our wedding just to have it in a Church. We came to the decision that as long as our ceremony recognises our beliefs and that we will be living with a believe in God, as a couple, we felt that this was right for us. Has anyone else found it difficult to make a decision similar to this?

The fact that a big draw to the venue for us was having everything in the one spot, also affected our choice and we are happy that we have managed to maintain this. The ladies and myself will be staying at the venue the night before, for one last single lady sleepover :), and many of our guests will have the opportunity to stay at the venue if they wish. Given that we will have people who have travelled, this is a great plus.

We also loved the fact that the venue offered so many photo opportunities - the gorgeous big lake with it's fountains, the lovely old trees and the beautiful windows in the rooms within the resort are only a few of the options...there's even a lady who will lend her Shetland ponies for photos! (She has a moving restaurant...yep, it's a horse-drawn restaurant and I REALLY want to give it a go!)

The only other bump we almost hit was when I entered the Gazebo room for the first time. I fell in love with the spaciousness of the room, the floors, the windows, the very exciting separate dance floor (all the other rooms had very limited dance space in the middle of the room)...but the one thing I wasn't keen on was the back of the room.

To give you an idea, the Gazebo room is also used as the Gazebo restaurant - there is a kitchen area out the back and the room is filled with chairs and tables when not in use for a wedding and is used to host the morning after breakfast bunch for guests. So at the back of the room, there are some kitchen-like benches (Excuse the bad photography, mobile phone again!):



It was the only thing about the room I didn't love! However, we've decided to still go with the room, and we've worked out ways to utilise the space. We're going to decorate this area and use it as the guest book/wishing well/present area. Since we are using a thumbprint tree (more on this later!) the dark bench tops at the left side of the area is perfect for this set up - it makes me worry less about staining anything! The rest rest of the space we are going to decorate with various elements of the wishing well/present area (I have so many ideas still to narrow down...family wedding photos, telegram tree, etc. still to come!) with consultation with our wedding co-ordinator. Myself and lovely friend Laina, (remember the discussion about her gorgeous soy melts?) have already started making plans to fill that little shelf up top with candles of varying shapes and sizes...I think the light reflecting off the tiles will look quite pretty!

The rest of the room is fantastic - there is an island in the middle of the room that we will also be decorating with flowers and candles...Hopefully it all works out as I have visualised it!

I'm so happy that the boy was excited about the room...I had a feeling he would be, but took him around to all the other rooms in the venue first. If he had preferred any of the others, we probably would have gone with what he liked, but I had had a feeling he would prefer the open space of the Gazebo room.

Hopefully we will be able to get some pictures of the room tomorrow, but just in case we can't, here's a little view of the room:


From the back looking forward...


From the front looking back...


Corner table (cake table was displayed here on the day)


Bridal table...


Dance floor space...

The only other fear I hold is not being able to customize the wedding enough, to make it feel "different" from every other wedding I've attended...I had lots of little details I want to add, but I have concerns about what my limitations may be for things included in our package! From speaking with our co-ordinator, it appears that they are very open to ideas and don't limit you to specific choices, rather they give you a budget within your package for each section (and left over can roll over to other sections)...but I still worry. I don't want a cookie-cutter table setting, for example...

Has anyone else had room obstacles to overcome, or worried about how individual you are able to be, while working within a package?

finding the venue

So after we got engaged and enjoyed some celebrations, my thoughts turned to setting a date (much to my future hubby's despair). In my head, I knew that if we set a date and a venue ASAP, we would be much more likely to get the date we (read: I, lol) wanted and the rest we could take our time with...

I had my heart set on a September wedding...for no other reasons then it sounds pretty, and the end of September is probably one of the few times of the year where there is limited stuff on, family-wise. The beginning of the year was always going to be a no-go zone for us, and winter weddings (while I love winter!) are just too cold...

The OCD part of me really didn't like the sound of 2013...I needed a nice even year to get married in and 2014 seemed waaaaaay too far away. So, September 2012 became our time (after much discussion with the future hubby!) and the twenties our time frame (either 22nd or 29th - a Saturday wedding).

Finding a venue ended up happening a lot faster then I thought it was! And it was all purely by chance...

I started looking around for venues online, comparing packages and pictures...

The first place I looked at was one we had driven past on the way to my brother's wedding in January 2011 - Loxley at Bluebell Hill. While the venue looked lovely, something just didn't feel right...While I am most definitely a Mountains girl, my boy is not so big a fan. And I definitely wanted it to feel like "us". Nevertheless, I keep it in mind to check out.

One of the other options I really liked was Lauriston House. I loved the vintage look but at the same time...it was almost too "done". Something still didn't quite feel right.

The last two options I had narrowed down to was the Eschol Park House and Cropley House. After speaking with my mum, I discovered that Eschol Park house was where my aunt had gotten married...so it was ruled out straight away! Not because I don't love my aunt and would love to share where she got married...but I was flowergirl at her wedding. And that place is haunted. No joke. Myself and the other little flower girl refused to go in a particular corner of the house, as did the house cat...turns out that a lady and her baby had fallen down the Great Staircase in the middle of the house and died in that particular corner. Not something I want to be thinking about on my wedding day!

So that left Cropley House, and the future hubby took one look at it and said it looked like a Government building...guessing he didn't want that one then!!

That leaves the one place that stood out from the most, package wise. The Sebel Spa and Resort in Windsor. On paper, this place sounded fantastic and I kept going back to it...I loved the idea of have all of the day in one place (no travelling for the guests between venues!), having the day spa on site for lovely relaxation for the ladies the day before and the golf course for the boys, and the picture opportunities that the site offered. Somewhat fatefully, the Resort was actually hosting a Bridal Open Day on the 20th of March, about a week and a half after I stumbled across the information packages...

So I signed up, and mum and I went to check it out...



And loved it :)

There were 3 room options, plus the Chapel, but despite the beauty of the Ballroom and the other rooms I feel in love with the Gazebo room with it's big open windows. It had a spaciousness that the other rooms just didn't have and I felt that it would be lovely of a night.



The Chapel was also stunning...(although not a fan of the topairy or arch)







So all that was left was to get the men's approval...so we booked a time with the event coordinator for the next weekend and on the 26th of March at 11:15am we traipsed over - myself, the future hubby, my parents and my little brother. After showing the boys around and asking a million questions we decided this was it. The place we wanted to get married! And, as fate would have it...the 29th of September 2012 was available! As soon as the boy heard that the 29th of September was available, he rolled his eyes - my dad's response? "I guess that's the date then, by the look on his face!"

I'm reluctant to put any of the rather bad photos I took on the day up, since it was raining and I'm not the greatest photographer. But this weekend I will be going out to the venue with my little brother, who is bound to take some amazing shots I can share. We received our contact last Wednesday, the 30th of March, and I will be dropping it off at the Resort, signed and sealed, on Saturday.

I still can't believe that it was that easy...and that we booked the first place we looked at in person! Did anyone else book the first venue they sighted, or did it take some time to find the right place?