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.

I Love Pork!

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While we were in North Carolina, we stopped for lunch at Big Mountain Barbeque in Waynesville, NC, which is someone we are considering for catering. The food was reallly good, we all had pulled pork sandwiches, but tried to vary the sides. Their pork is served with no sauce and they have 5 different sauces to choose from: spicy, Eastern NC style, Western NC style, Honey bbq, and South Carolina style. I tried both the Eastern and the honey and loved both! We also loved loved their hushpuppies and Will and my mom loved the baked beans. We will also have chicken and a salad as well as other sides, so I hope everyone can find something they like. We meet with the manager to discuss catering and were really excited by their reasonable prices. They don't charge a travel fee to Franklin and they provide all the table cloths we need, plates, silverware and glasses. I'm just waiting for them to send me the menu with the various packages and then we will book them! Our trip was so productive!

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!

This Is Where I Try To Obtain French Vintage Flair!

If you know me, you know I love anything French! So for my wedding, I will grab on to anything that seems French and try to incorporate it. I already had a loose vision of what I wanted the reception to look like, then I saw these pictures in the Utterly Engaged e-zine and loved them! They totally say French to me and they also fit into the look I was already going for for the reception.

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 I love the table linens, I love the milk glass vases, I love the flowers, I love the cake stands, I love the wooden chairs, I love everything! I've already found a bunch of milk glass vases to use and will be filling them with an assortment of flowers, including lots and lots of dahlias!

Here are some of the mockups:

I know I will definitely have long tables instead of round, which actually saves money since we can borrow them from my mom's church. It looks like we might be getting chairs from there as well, so instead of wooden they will be metal. Now I just need to find some table linens that have a similar feel to the ones in the pictures from Utterly Engaged, I just think they look so much better than normal wedding linens!

A Ranger Station For My Ranger

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Originally, I liked the idea of having it at my parent's house in their backyard on the side of the mountain. The main problem was that they didn't have a house in Franklin, and we weren't sure if they were going to have one by the time I got married. Currently, they still haven't started building a house, so we decided to figure out other options. My mom suggested Wilson Lick Ranger Station, which is also located on Wayah Bald and about 3 miles from the tower. After I saw pictures, I loved the idea. Add in that my fiance works for the Park Service, and it seemed perfect. We were able to get our permit for the tower to also apply to Wilson Lick. And then we had the ceremony and reception reserved, not to mention both cost $0!!

The challenge was figuring out how to get everyone from the tower to Wilson Lick. While the tower has parking for about 30 cars, Wilson Lick's parking lot can only hold 3 cars. And the fact that we will have no electricity at either location.