The Goldilocks of Venues

Bah! For some reason my drafts are not being saved! Grrr.

Lately I've been feeling a bit like the Goldilocks of venues.
Too BIG!
Too small!
Too expensive!

I'm waiting to hear back from a place that I think might be my "just right" so I can go and take a gander. Verbally it sounds like the place of my dreams! It's actually in a building that I know and love, it's recently renovated, reasonably priced, allows us to bring in our own booze, is centrally located and the views! One side looks down into one of my favorite Toronto places and the other, well the other looks out onto the city. I'm basically in love with it before even seeing it. Which I know is bad, because if I hate it I will be so sad. It always sucks when you find out your crush is a big fat jerk! You know?

Nothing can move forward until I have a venue!

And since I'm talking about venues...Ever since I started reading wedding blogs I've started to have the sneaking suspicion that I am the only person in the world that doesn't know someone who owns a farm, ranch, mansion, retreat, magical forest where I can have my wedding.
Seriously!

I know Montreal!

For a brief moment today I entertained the idea of having our wedding in Montreal. Montreal is very special to both of us as we go there at least once a year together and if I had to live in any other city in Canada it would be there. We heart Montreal.


I even IM'd The Mister and said "What would you think of getting married in Montreal?" and he replied "Ohhhhh!"


Then I started researching it a bit. If we got married in Montreal it would be at city hall I mean look at it!!
It's beautiful! Compared to Toronto's city hall....Yeah and the wedding chambers? blech.

So I got more and more excited, we could go for a couple of days and do things with our friends and family and have our reception at one of our favorite restaurants! I started thinking about going to the flower market in the morning.

I IM'd my another friend and asked "Would you come to my wedding if it was in Montreal?" of course he said yes but then added that although it would probably cut down on guest numbers it would also be a pretty expensive wedding for those that did come. He figured a minimum of 500 dollars. I realised he was right. I couldn't do that to my friends and family.

It wasn't a big dream or anything just a whim that I thought might be fun. I've also thought about renting out a cottage for a week in the fall but the price of that was pretty hilarious. I've thought about the restaurant option but the bar tab for that would be so much more than renting a place for a grand and bringing in our own beer and wine that we love and not beer and wine we can afford at restaurant markups.

So I'm back where I started which is fine with me.

So tired. So, so tired.

Ladies and gentlemen(like men read wedding planning blogs! At least mine doesn't which is why he thinks I'm a bit nuts probably!) I am exhausted. More exhausted than I have been in a long time! I was ready to hit the pillow at about 9pm! Today we walked around the city for about 6 hours. The weather was unseasonably warm and it felt good to be outside without worrying about extremities freezing if they weren't covered.

It was probably one of the best days all winter.

Today we got beer brewing supplies and ended up carrying them the rest of the day. We went from one end of the city to another to buy exotic honey and taste about 10 different honeys before settling on one! I never realised how different honeys can taste some of them were woody and some of them incredibly floral and the different colours! I can see it becoming a new culinary obsession with us. Similar outings have turned us into beer nerds, cheese nerds, chocolate nerds, mustard nerds..oh gosh at one time we counted the different mustards in our fridge and we had 20 different types and flavors and not one of them just plain! I probably shouldn't even be admitting such things! We all have something I guess! Some people really love shoes or art..we love random food items!

Anymustardfreak....after the honey tasting we hoofed it up to get a tour of a venue I dig. The tree house one. We couldn't really go outside to the tree house but we saw the inside area that we were interested in. Even with out 55 max people it would still be too big and the guy who gave me the tour wasn't the guy who I'd been dealing with in email and he was really nice but he also never stopped talking and name dropping. I don't know if it's an event thrower thing or a city thing but name dropping always seems to irk me with some people. So we get the tour and finally it's time to talk dollar signs. He asked what our budget was and I said
"We're having 55 people at most so our budget is 6500-7000"
I swear his eyes rolled into the back of his head at that very moment.
"Well...the rental fee is 3500." Although it included tables, chairs etc, etc. They do have a new space off site that is smaller and about half that price so were going to look at it this week. So we'll see.

I'm starting to wonder if a restaurant would be the way to go. I think that the bar tab alone would be more than a rental fee...but it could be an option.

I always wanted a tree house!

Nothing sucks more than receiving an information package from a venue and reading such wonderful things as...

"This two-story event tree house can accommodate up to 50 guests for full service dining on the lower deck. The fully heated and air-conditioned upper deck can accommodate up to 10 guests for seated dining."

Yes you read that right..a tree house! A tree house that holds 50 guests meaning if we went for a small wedding of 45 it would be perfect! This venue is so us for so many reasons! One of them being I used to love climbing trees and always dreamed of having a tree house! It would set the whole theme and give me direction! I want to get married in a tree house!

and

"We are happy NOT to charge you the following:
Cake Cutting Fee
Corkage Fee
Gratuities"

Then I scroll down and see things on the menu such as...
Mac and Cheese Popovers, Potato Skins stuffed with Cheese and Bacon,Mini Croque Monsieurs, Sliders: Mini Veggie or Beef Burgers AND a whole "Gastro Pub" list of Hors d’Oeuvres:

Roast Beef on Miniature Yorkshire Puddings
Bangers and Mash Hors d’Oeuvre – Sausage and Mash on a Potato Crisp
Miniature Bacon Sandwiches
Ploughman’s Lunch Skewer – Cheese, Pickle, Onion and Tomato
Cornish Pasties – Light Vegetarian Curry Filling
Chip Buddies – White Bread and Chips

Yes I realise the above Gastro Pub Hors d'Oeuvres probably don't sound too yummy to some (or very weddingy) but were both Anglophiles and practically everyone we know is as well. The Mister had actually just moved back from there when we met! It's also the only place we've been on vacation to over seas!

The person who responded even said that the chef would have a lot of fun incorporating our beer into the meal!

Of course it seems to be out of our price range. But it might work and I think when The Mister saw that they did mini versions of gastro pub foods AND that they would let us bring our own beers in he might have been a bit more sold on it!

Having a venue like this would be my dream. I could have my first dance, something that I would have to forfeit if we had a small city hall wedding with a restaurant dinner afterwards.
Really they had me at tree house!

Time keeps ticking, ticking, ticking into the future.

This is my back deck this morning, about half the snow has melted. There would have been even more snow but during an earlier snow fall I had gone out and shovelled it into the yard. We built those chairs and stained them what we thought would be a reddish colour but it turned out to be really orange. I'm hoping that they will take on a vintage weathered look by being left out this winter. I think I'll paint them white come spring. One of the things I made sure we got when we bought a house was a large yard. Gardening is one of the things I'm really good at and really proud of being knowledgeable in.

I don't recall if I have mentioned it by The Mister is 6 years older than me. Most of our friends in the city are a bit younger than him but in our circle I am the youngest at 31. All of our friends are married, some are even divorced, we all own houses and we currently have one baby in the group(other than me!) and friends just announced yesterday that we are expecting a second this summer. I've attended all of their weddings.

Being an "older" bride -and lets face it I am older than the average bride it seems, even though all my friends married around the same age as me.- and having an even older groom brings up some things that I don't think a younger bride really has to think about.

Like if we have a bigger wedding it will have to be next year, meaning that we probably wouldn't have a baby until 2011. The Mister will be 40. I'll be 33-34. I want to have at least two children, this means that after that unless we had twins first time round that the second child would either have to be in the oven within a year of the first or I'd be in that land of chance called THIRTY FIVE. I know lots of women have children after 35 but with various health issues I don't think I'd be one of them. Time is not on my side.

Of course if we have a very small gathering. Maybe go to city hall then have a backyard shindig with really awesome food and lots of fun we could do it late this summer or early fall, after all the backyard and the house need a ton of work before I would entertain this option!

Then start trying for baby numero uno.

I know it sounds incredibly selfish and it should be an easy choice right? I know it sounds even borderline Bridezillaish which is not what I want to be and I know I'm not. I know in the grand scheme of things children are so much more important to me than a beautiful dress I wear for one day. It's just harder than I expected to let go of the dream.

The very first thing!!

This morning I did my first real wedding related thing! I emailed a venue! One of the message boards I like to read is Chowhound and recently someone asked about wedding venues here in the city. Most of the replies were places I'd already heard of except for one, The Children's Peace Theatre. No one I know has ever heard of the place but it's home is the Massey Gould Estate which is a short drive from my house. The website is pretty basic on the information front but their rental page does say a few magic words to me....

• Charming historic house and grounds
• Convenient location
• Number of meeting places within the building
• Reasonably priced
• Fully equipped kitchen
• Open to any catering company
• List of caterers available
• No corkage fee
• Free parking

Just that list makes it sound absolutely perfect. I keep checking my email over and over again to see if they have replied yet! Hooray!

Carte Blanche!

I don't think I've mentioned yet how The Mister has given me carte blanche in regards to our wedding. What I decide though seems to have some affect on other aspects of our lives though.
It's hard for me to decide on what I want without wondering how that choice is going to affect the other things. It's doubly hard when I know that I would be happy with a small backyard wedding just as much as I would be happy with a big dinner and dancing wedding.

I do know a few things for sure though which instantly limit the options.

1. We have a small budget. A budget that is about half of what the city average is. I plan on using my skills as a crafty mofo to keep certain things on budget and put our personal touch to the whole shindig.
2. We want a venue where we can bring our own booze in. We are admitted beer snobs, we have a beer cellar..yep beer cellar. We have use a beer broker to get imported beers that are not available in the liquor store. I'm also getting more into wine these days and adding some of those to the cellar.

We live in a major city. A city where the average cost per person is 200-300 dollars per person according to the interwebs. Lucky for us the most we would invite would be 75 people and that is including people that might just "have" to be invited to save face and most likely wouldn't show. Which brings a problem with finding a venue that can host a small gathering. Some places that I thought were perfect require a minimum number of guests usually around 100. There are several heritage sites that are absolutely beautiful but then you read the fine print and see that their approved caterers which you have to use charge you an extra 15% heritage tax on top of everything. These things add up fast.

I'll talk about being a beer snob in another post. It's actually funny being a girl who knows more about beer than most people. I've always been a bit of a food and drink snob though so obviously that's an aspect of finding a venue that I need to look at.

I am feeling generally overwhelmed by the task at hand. Other than budget I have no direction to go on which leaves me with many options and I think using my usual method of decision making IE: Ennie Meenie just wouldn't work that well!