Photo credit: Julia Marie Photography
Pop the champagne, because we picked our wedding venue and wedding date!
FRIDAY, JUNE 11TH, 2021
I am overjoyed with so much happiness that we officially are able to have a countdown now, and it feels 10x more real! (Only 604 more days/20 months to go!)
There were so many different options all over in my head to chose from, I didn’t even know where to start! (Okay I kind of have been looking my entire life, but once it became real, I kind of started all over again) I’ve always wanted some sort of enchanted garden theme with lanterns and wisteria in a woodsy area, but then as I grew older, I always dreamt of a beach wedding in Stone Harbor, NJ where I grew up going every summer with my entire family for a week.
I didn’t want to make our decision too hard, so we narrowed it down to only looking at only two venues:
1. Enchanted garden location – Foxchase Golf Course in Stevens, PA
2. On the beach location – Women’s Civic Club of Stone Harbor in NJ
Picking a wedding venue is a huge deal. It’s expensive, and sets the mood for your entire big day. It’s also incredibly overwhelming. How can I possibly pick a venue if I don’t know what everything else will cost yet?
After viewing both venues we decided to add up numbers, and reach out to tons of different vendors to get quotes for different things. We wanted get one ballpark grand number of what our whole wedding would cost. Luckily, both venues came out to be not too far off from each other in total.
Long story short the venue we chose was…
ON THE BEACH AT THE WOMEN’S CIVIC CLUB OF STONE HARBOR!
Both photo credit: Women’s Civic Club website
I could not feel more confident about our decision. I have decided to combine both my dream themes together, and bring the enchanted garden theme to the beach!
Overall, it will probably end of stressing me out more because they allow you to bring in all of your own vendors which means we have a lot of people to contact. But, the positive side of that is that we can make it as low cost as we want! I am so excited that we are able to have an affordable, dreamy wedding in the place that is most near and dear to my heart.
It’s still a good ways away, but we love that it gives us time to save, and not feel rushed with planning. We chose 2021 because Spring of 2020 is just too soon, and Fall 2020 was a little less than a year, and I’ve always wanted a Spring wedding.
I’ve also always known in my head I wanted either a Friday or Sunday wedding to keep costs down. It was never in my plans to do any venue on a Saturday. As far as I know, we are paying for everything ourselves and must stay on budget.
We ended up choosing a Friday over a Sunday because it can allow people to get down the beach early and spend their whole weekend there! Not only that, but I want our guests to really enjoy themselves, and not have to think about working the next day, or leaving early just so they can get a head start home.
We have a good idea that we will be having Mission BBQ catering our wedding buffet style (yum!), and have a tasting coming up in the next few weeks! But I already know by springtime we will definitely be booking them!
Other than that, we have just been calling around and looking for tent, chairs, and tables quotes for the outdoor reception/ceremony.
Of course I’ve been pinning tons and tons of ideas as well for the wedding. You can follow along my Wedding Board on Pinterest here to see what my visions are 🙂
Thank you so much for reading this post, and we are so excited to begin this planning process! Let me know what you want to see next! xo
