Mountain Music

After all the wedding dreams and a panicked phone call to my mom, we have now resolved almost all the issues that were giving me nightmares. The first thing my mom did was to email her friend about playing for our ceremony. Growing up, I always wanted a string quartet, but now I am over that. I wanted something that represented the mountains and so I decided I wanted a dulcimer! Not only is this a mountain instrument, but my mom plays the dulcimer. She is even in a dulcimer group (my mom has become so much cooler since moving back to the mountains) and one of her fellow group members had agreed to play for our wedding! He is going to be playing his first wedding in May and its also outdoors so he can judge whether he is loud enough alone or if we need more than one dulcimer.

In case you don't know what a dulcimer is, here is a picture:

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I don't think I'm going to tell him what music to play during the ceremony. I might pick something for when I walk in but in general I love the sound of hymns played on the dulcimer. (I was going to insert a video of a hymn on the dulcimer, but since I wrote this post three weeks ago and still haven't found the time to do that, I'm leaving that to you! There are a lot of videos on YouTube)

I'm really excited to have our ceremony music be something that reminds me of the mountains and my mom.

The Reality of Seating

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In my dream wedding, guests would be sitting on plain brown benches. I love the way the benches are low and don't interfere with the views or the surrounding. I think they are perfect for an outdoor wedding. Unfortunately, they are so hard to find! I was able to find about 35 benches from a rental company in Raleigh, but they were white and 5 hours away.

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Once I figured out it was going to be impossible to have brown benches, I moved on to my second choice, haybales. This was much more attainable, my great uncle promised to set aside enough hay to have seating for everyone. I really liked the idea of haybales since they were still low and I loved how they looked when covered with a bunch of different quilts. Then the reality of getting all the hale up to the ceremony site and finding enough quilts to cover the hay set in. I was also afraid the haybales would be too low for some people and too scratchy.

So I finally resigned myself to actual chairs. I'm sure guests will be much happier and I was able to find wooden chairs so I'm hoping they won't be as noticeable as white ones. We will be using the same chairs for the reception, which makes me excited to think about long rows of wooden chairs with the white tables.

                                 

BTW, this last picture comes from this wedding that I am totally obsessed with, they also used haybales as ceremony seating.

The Wedding Site!!!

We have decided on a wedding site! Its a family friend's farm complete with an orchard. We are getting married in one corner of the property where three trees form a triangle that open to great mountain views!

You can even see the mountain where my family lives.

The reception will take place a few feet away under the apple trees. Tables will be placed under these trees.

And the food and drinks will be under these trees.

There is an open area right next to the trees where the band and dance floor will go. I am really excited about having found this spot. Its free (!!!) and we can setup ahead of time. This site has a lot of improvements over our old site. Since there are two houses that are not being used right now, we can store things for the wedding there and we won't have to rent bathrooms! We won't have to figure out how to transport everyone from the ceremony location to the reception location, we will have electricity and lots of shade.

Success!

We've been in North Carolina for 5 hours and have found our wedding site! It's not any of the places from the last post but I'm posting from Will's phone so no pictures for now. All I'll tell you is it involves mountain views and an orchard!

The Search For A Venue

This weekend we will be heading to North Carolina to hopefully find a venue for our ceremony and reception. I am determined to make a decision this weekend and to move forward with booking the rest of our vendors. Here are the top potential options:

Option 1: Nantahala Village. Its 30 minutes away from Franklin but is reasonably priced and includes all the tables, chairs, linens, silverware, plates and glasses we need. We would have to use on site catering, which is more than we were planning on paying for barbecue. Here is a picture of one of the potential wedding sites:

 

This picture was taken by my dad while he was standing in the parking lot and the highway is directly behind him, so I'm not sure we want to be that close to the road. We do want people to be able to hear us. 

Option 2: Family land in Burningtown. This would be free (!) but we would have to bring everything in and set it up. We would be able to use any caterer though, which would save money. I'm not sure if there is a big enough flat area to have the ceremony and reception, but I imaging having the ceremony up on the hill and then the reception by the barn. This is a bad picture of me, but its the best one I can find of the location. 

 

 

Option 3: Wayah Bald Picnic Area: Its close to our original wedding location, but its not as pretty since there is not tower. It still has great views, but I don't its as pretty. We would have to bring everything in here as well. The only picture I can find is of Will and me on Christmas morning but we are standing in front of a wooden fence and there is a grassy area with a gravel road around it in front of us.

Option 4: Something yet to be discovered!

Entering A New Year With Hope

We found out a couple weeks ago that our ceremony location will be closed for construction :'( At first, I could not even imagine getting married somewhere else. I have always wanted to get married at Wayah Bald and it just seemed like it wouldn't be as special to get married anywhere else. My mom seemed pretty optimistic that we could find somewhere else. I think I spend most of the next week researching any location that had a good view in Franklin, NC. The problem was that I really wanted to see them all in person and Will and I would only be in Franklin for 3 days over Christmas. We were able to have an extra 4 days in Franklin the week before Christmas due to a funeral, so we spent a lot of that time looking at locations. I came away from that trip feeling hopeless. Nothing we had seen had given me a good feeling and no one really had the same amazing views of Wayah.

My mom and grandmother have been asking all of their friends for recommendations on places to get married. One of the ladies from church suggested St. John's Episcopal Church. At first, I was really sceptical because I had no desire to get married indoors. Will and I stopped by on Christmas day and I almost started crying, it was so perfect. St. John's has an outdoor santuary with benches (I'm dying to have benches!) and chapel was so cute. There was even a bell we could ring!!

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We left there feeling great about the wedding. I called the church first thing on Monday morning but it wasn't until Wednesday that I heard back from the minister. Unfortunetly, they don't let you get married there unless you are Episcopal or have a family member that attends, so that is now out. Back to the search!

Even with all the setbacks, I've feeling really hopeful for 2010. Will and I will at least get married and it will hopefully be in an amazing place surronded with all our family and friends.

Mountaintop View

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As soon as we were engaged, actually since I was about 12, I knew I wanted to get married in Franklin, NC. My grandmother lives there, along with a lot of grand aunts and uncles, my parents are in the process of moving there and its where we spent a lot of our vacation growing up. My family lives on Wayah Mountain, which has a great old fire lookout tower on top, so I knew that was the spot.

Prior to getting engaged, I had already looked into what it takes to reserve Wayah Bald. Its a national park, so although I won't have sole rights to the location on our date, I did need a permit. In case anyone else out there is trying to get married in a national park, you need a permit if you are going to have more than 75 people present. You need to fill out an application and take it to your local forest office. Here is a description of the process. This actually went surprisingly well. My mom took the form and we were approved immediately!