Location-Location-Location!

People keep asking us when the wedding is. My response has been, "Next summer, on whatever Saturday the place we find is available." They stare at me with a weird look on their faces, as if they didn't quite hear me. Or I had said, "Why do you want to know, you're not invited!" Apparently most people pick a date, then find a location. The fact that I was doing this in reverse seemed so logical, I felt like some sort of idiot savant when it came to planning my own wedding.

I was very resourceful. The Monday after we got engaged I sent out an email requesting location suggestions to a list serve I belong to for women lawyers. I got a ton of responses. One woman even emailed me her excel spreadsheet of locations that she had scouted for her own wedding! After rejecting a number out of hand because of cost, one name that kept coming up was Silver Falls (see link on side to view). We went to check it out last weekend and it was very nice. It would probably work, although of course, nothing is perfect. One concern is that it is an hour and 15 minutes from Portland. That's fine for people who want to stay over, but what about the rest? And the reception area is two dining rooms connected by a common area where the food is served buffet style. I don't care about the buffet aspect, but we'd be separated from 1/2 the wedding for part of the wedding. Grant pointed out that this would only last about 2 hours, because the rest of the time we would all be outside on the large lawn. That makes sense, but still, I had concerns. Like, should we commit to renting it for 2 days? That definitely didn't fit into my $6,000 budget.

So I put it on the list of possibilities and started calling other places on the list I had compiled. Some were rejected out of hand because of cost. No matter. I felt pretty confident because, after all, we were talking about over a year away. Then I heard "no" from a number of places because they were booked up already, or didn't allow alcohol (!). I didn't hear anything back from several others.

I began agonizing over where we were going to get married. Considering we've only been engaged for 2 weeks, this did not bode well for future planning. I just kept telling myself that this is the hardest part and once its done I have a year to worry about everything else and there will be no reason to stress until just before. (Should I write "HAH!" here?)

I started to panic. What if I was stuck with this less than perfect location? What if we couldn't fill all 76 rooms? What if it rains and we are trapped in the L-shaped dining room? What if the food sucks? This was going to cost a fortune, and I started to realize that Silver Falls was woefully insufficient for what I had envisioned. This sucked. Our wedding was going to suck! Everyone would talk about it for years as the wedding that sucked! I started to get a stomach ache and began looking for my xanax.

Luckily, I had the wherewithal to call my friend Connie and she held my head as I spilled out all my anxieties into the metaphoric psychic toilet bowl of wedding distress. Maybe it's from dealing with 2 kids (or the fact that she had to plan her own wedding, which was FABULOUS by the way), but she had the patience to listen to all my concerns and allay them one by one. Of course people would drive. They do that all the time for weddings. Of course it would be fine if we only had it there one night. We could have a bbq in town the day before. One by one, she flushed the fears away (love that bathroom metaphor), until I arrived home to talk with Grant.

He was incredibly sweet as I laid out my concerns, and together we figured out a way to make it work. The fact that we were able to work together on this only reinforced my belief that this is absolutely the right man to spend the rest of my life with. What a wonderful, amazing wedding we would have. It is the perfect location!

Relieved, I called Silver Falls the next day, ready to take the plunge. Sure, they had availability (yeah!). When did I want to get married? Summertime, well, that would be tough. Wait a second, amazing news! They just had a cancellation for the second weekend in August! 2009? Oh. Oh. Oh-oh. Tiny problem. They don't take reservations for weddings until a year before. They assumed I had been talking about THIS year. So what do I need to do? On July 1st, first thing in the morning, I have to call and try and make a reservation. He suggested that I call repeatedly, since they usually get flooded that day with calls. And if July fills up, then I have to wait until August 1st and try for that month. And if that doesn't work, well, looks like I'm out of luck and the search has to start all over.

So, please don't try and call me on July 1st. I won't be answering. And if you really want to be nice PLEASE don't ask when the wedding is. I promise, we'll let you know!