Our Search for the Venue

Last I left off we had just started the wedding planning process. I'll tell you this, it's a totally different experience dreaming about your wedding than actually starting to make decisions about it. Do I want a traditional wedding? Trendy? Modern? Vintage? Garden? Barn? Afternoon? Morning? Brunch? Sunday? Saturday? Destination? Home? (lions and bears, oh my)

We decided to start wedding planning with the biggest choice, the venue. Mr. Farmer and I figured this might help shape what we wanted our wedding to be and would be a big decision out of the way. After we discovered that the first place we looked, didn't work for us we realized we needed to move on. First and foremost we needed to decide the location.

I am no artist but I tried my best - drawn by yours truly

You see majority of my family lives in Wausau, Wisconsin and majority of Mr. Farmer's family lives around the Pipestone, Minnesota area so logistically this created a nightmare. Mr. Farmer was against having the wedding around Pipestone and we didn't want to have all of his friends and family drive over 6 hours to have the wedding in my hometown. Since we knew a wedding in the Twin Cities was out of our budget we started to look into the Rochester area. It was close to the middle but not quite as metropolitan and hopefully cheaper.

We love to be outside. Come summer time we are barely inside so we knew we wanted an outdoor ceremony. When I thought of an outdoor ceremony I immediately thought of a country club. I mean seriously they have some of the most beautiful picturesque opportunities because of all that green.

photo via The Rochester Country Club

We liked what they had to offer and the food looked amazing. I still wanted to see what else I could find before committing to this location. I mean you have to shop around, right?! And to be honest it was on the higher side of our budget. 

After a Google search I stumbled upon this place and loved the pictures they had.

  

The Mayowood Stone Barn Photo by: Janelle Elise

Seriously, this place is gorgeous. We requested some additional information on it and were super bummed to find out that they were totally booked for the month of July 2014. We also discovered that they were out of our budget. Bummer!

Guys this next place I am about to tell you about breaks my heart. It is by far the coolest most amazing venue I have ever seen in my entire life. We even considered raising our budget just so that we could have our wedding here.  I am NOT kidding you this is worth checking out. I give you, A'bulae in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Photo by: Bellagala found via A'bulae

 I know I said we were looking in the Rochester area but I found this baby one day and couldn't resist mentioning it. It is the tech savvy venue of the future. Not only is it stunningly beautiful (this photo doesn't do it justice) the ceremony is on the rooftop of this building overlooking the city. Oh my heart be still. The problem with this venue?

Oh silly me of course this place is so awesome, it's booked solid for 2 whole years! And I mean booked solid. There were hardly any Friday/Sunday weddings left and certainly no Saturdays.  I still dream about this beautiful venue. If you are in the area and looking for an event space check this out. I promise it won't disappoint. It's epic!

photo via The Doubletree in Rochester, MN

This place too was beautiful. It was the traditional ballroom setting but again logistically it made the most sense. All of our guests would be coming from out of town so accommodations would be taken care of. PLUS Mr. Farmer is a Hilton Honors member which meant we could rack up some much needed points.  The response time was wonderful but alas they didn't have our date available. Grrrr!!

It appeared that I had pretty high expectations. All of these places were beautiful and each had something that we loved about them but alas they were either too expensive or not available.

 Did anyone else have such a difficult time deciding your venue?