Venue chosen! Tentative date(s) picked!

Mama G was in town this past weekend, and as a result I now have two new Gmail Tasks lists: 'blog post ideas' and 'wedding to do.' I'm sure the to do list will morph into something much bigger  very soon, Google products I love you but some things just aren't fully up to snuff in their functionality.

I will slowly try to work through the 'blog post ideas' to clear it out at least a little bit (possibly tomorrow evening during my JS class...though that will be harder to get away with what with the all the pictures that will be included, heh), because ever since our 2 hour planning session at Meghan's fueled by pear cider and apple cider doughnuts from Greenmarket, I have been Googling like mad and finding lots of great stuff.

Anyway, venue! Chosen! Mama G threw her full support behind Mountain Lakes House which was just what I needed. Also I agonized over it for a whole week and that was enough time to let it fade and get sensible if it were possible. In her words:

You and your guests will not remember what you had to eat at the reception but you will remember the setting and charm of the location. Feed them peanut butter and crackers, if you have to, but have your wedding there!!! Lovely house and setting - I can picture it now.

Which was just the thing in the end, really, I could just picture what we'd all look like hanging around on on the lawn by the pond and on the patios. All classy and grown up.

Of course, peanut butter is a no no for He Who Is Allergic To Life (if Dan does stuff worth memoirizing about, the title of the first volume will be Allergic to Life) but we decided on the following:

• Saturday date, so people don't necessarily have to take off from work to get here (I wanted Memorial Day weekend originally but Princeton has their graduation weekend then)
• afternoon (1-6ish or maybe 2-7ish) so that we don't have to deal with arranging artificial lighting and we take full advantage of the scenic venue. It's also early enough that people won't expect a full-blown dinner and the older folk don't have to leave early, while the younger folk can continue socializing in bar-hopping or some such later that evening if so desired, but also not too early such that we're up at Jesus o'clock setting up.
• champagne* and dessert** reception (*with nice beer and tea, maybe wine, and partial potluck on the desserts with pies from the good bakers we know, cupcake stand, Mama G's chocolate fountain, and **sandwich platters as well because Dan insists that no matter what people expect to be fed more than just dessert at a social event) I just like calling it a champagne and dessert reception for now because it's more elegant than all the rest together. Also I have no objections to also have OJ and milk available still, brunch or no brunch.
• Mama G to be my long-distance planner and possibly day-of coordinator as well (Meg's younger sister's graduation is early June)
• potential red (my dress)/orange/yellow color theme, I'd like to make an inspiration board

And many, many more other ideas that are now floating around. Right now I'm focused on trying to see if it's at all possible to get just one caterer who will do this kind of food at a good price plus help us figure out the rentals and provide a few people on the day-of to do setup and cleanup. It's probably unlikely, so I've been reading about self-catering as well, which is daunting, but so it goes. 

I suspect it'll be hard to find a caterer who will do all the services stuff but then be ok with us asking them to just get sandwich platters from Costco or something like that. I did find that apparently there are people who are just 'catering managers' which is a cross between a full-blown planner/coordinator and catering company. I haven't Googled that just yet but we're so near NYC, there should be enough aspiring chefs and restauranteurs that I'd be able to find with postings at a local culinary or school something, I suspect.

The current tentative dates are 6/11/11, 6/18/11, and 6/25/11. My preference is the 18th but Dan needs to check with his mom about a competition she takes a school team to that happens every year right after school ends. Anyone else have any preferences one way or another?

I'm really happy and excited about the venue and food style choice, it feels right and doable, especially with Mama G's help. Hooray!

Food ideas

I've been a bit distressed about the cost of feeding so many people, but just wanted to dump some of the ideas floating around in my head right now:

• Have a morning/early afternoon wedding and serve brunch + mimosas (A Practical Wedding on her morning wedding)
• Have it be a potluck: we make a bulk main course, like lasagna, locals bring appetizers/pies, out-of-towners bring drinks (2000 Dollar Wedding on potlucks)
• Jersey shore diner theme (more breakfast for dinner)
• Make your own pizzas/rent a pizza truck--The Google smiled upon me today and I found two pizzerias that cater with trucks!
• Nomad Pizza (local, organic, seasonal ingredients--hooray!)
• Jiannetto's Pizza (catering info not directly on website but I found this Time Out article on alternative catering for weddings, which also lists a beef burger truck, a waffle truck, and an ice cream truck!)
• Shake Shack (I actually emailed them on Friday...and I bet I'm not the first)

Mountain Lakes House

Third and final place we visited this past weekend.

Mountain Lakes House

We're not going to visit any more. The four we've seen could all work, it's a matter of figuring out the tradeoffs between location and facility convenience and such. There's a new tab on the vendors spreadsheet to comparing the three from this weekend.

Prallsville Mills

The second place we visited last weekend, located in Stockton, which is on the Delaware River and is very charming.

Prallsville Mills

I took over 100 pictures, so this album is actually quite edited down. The inside of the mill is just so architecturally interesting! And I very much like the water nearby. The site rental fee for the mill is actually tax-deductible, because it's a donation to the society that takes care of its upkeep.

[edit] I forgot to mention that I was very impressed by the information package Brillman's Rental Barn put together for us. Nice glossy folder with all sorts of additional info inside, not just the rental application forms and such but also other local vendors, a floor plan (with the supporting beams in the middle of the floor marked out too), etc.

The Woman's Club of Englewood

This is the first place we visited last weekend. It's the best value, by far, I think, and the rental agent for the place, Maria, is impressively well-organized and prepared.

Woman's Club of Englewood

(I've switched to Picasa because I'm nearing my 200 photo limit on Flickr. 200 photos! Oh Yahoo.)

Casual and stylish backyard wedding.

Via A Cup of Jo, full details at Once Wed. I think I just really love lights on strings, the greatest consolation against winter for me is seeing the poor bare trees all lit up.

Rutgers Gardens

And we're back in the game! (name that movie reference)

Dan and I spent our day off today doing our very first venue visit! Rutgers Gardens has been the only one on my list to visit so far for reasons that are threefold (I just like the word constructions of '# + -fold,' even if I may not be using it correctly):

1. They had the rental prices posted on their website a few months ago and it was under $2000 to have a ceremony and reception area for 10 hours
2. Beautiful gardens backdrops for photos (see here, here, here, here, here and here--these are all the photos I could find in the first few pages of results for a Google search on 'rutgers gardens wedding')
3. They'd have the combo of experience and casualness that would fit. Pretentious this place is most certainly not.

January is a dismal time to visit an outdoors place, but luckily it was a pretty nice day today, warm and sunny. I could definitely see us getting married there. It is quite rustic but it would set the tone for the event overall in a good way, I think. I think the gardens would be really pretty and I also like the pond/lake views at the back of the log cabin.

Dan is concerned about logistics like parking and chairs and all that, so I'll call up their office this week and scope out what their responses are. Internet research thus far suggests that it's pretty no-frills, advised to get there early in the day for cleaning and setup, though it also looks like they've inserted a required caterer now (testimonials here), so maybe they've got a tighter grip on running things. It's one of the questions to ask.

It's probably a good idea to do a little bit more research (leads to be collected from here and here), so we'll visit a few more next weekend once I do some initial contacting this week. Dan wants to get some quotes on more conventional hotel venues. I'm leaving him to do the work on those since my preliminary research was that the cheap end of those sorts of places ran $85-$130/person, which means $10,000 easily hit with our guest list coming to around 90 people.

I'm leaning towards late May/early June for a date right now, though Dan is concerned about bees (allergic). The problem is that times of the year when you are guaranteed not to have bees about is also when everything is dormant or dead so...that's a difficulty.

We expect that most of our fights in this wedding planning process will revolve around some problem where Dan's lower threshold of hassle acceptance has been exceeded because I want something more interesting (sign #286 that we've been together a long time: we can predict where our conflicts will be and we know ourselves well enough that we know we can't really change to avoid it anyway).

The more cheerful part of our discussions today was that perhaps our theme should just be 'pie,' as I am attracted to the idea of make-your-own pizzas for food. We'd be able to accommodate both those who prefer more traditional pizza styles but also go more gourmet if you'd like. There could be a buffet of other sides and appetizers set up to tide you over while you wait for your pizza order. Anyway, with a pie theme, we could also have chicken pot pie (one of Dan's top 5 favorite foods of all time), shepherd's pie (eh), quiches (Dan's mom make good a mean quiche), and of course, wedding pies.