The frustrations of finding a venue

When we first started dating, almost all of the first dates were at Savage Mill. We shared our first kiss at Savage Mill's park, we first held hands at Savage Mill, we bonded and grew closer at Savage Mill, and my fiance proposed to me at Savage Mill. Because of all this, and the charming antique look of the place, we thought it would be great if we could also be married at Savage Mill. How romantic would that be? ;)

So, we made a meeting to talk to the manager of The Great Room. The problems with this place are plentiful.

Where to start... well, first off, the place is dirty and dusty. The windows don't look like they've been cleaned in a long time. There were dead insects littering the window sills. Maybe they were going to clean it up soon for the next event. Ahem.. they had had an event the night before... and it's June... this is major wedding season. If the windows aren't clean now, they won't ever be clean for future events. Oh, but they're just windows right, surely they've cleaned more important parts of the room. Ha ha... No. The floors, tables, and chairs are all filthy too. We weren't thrilled going into the meeting after seeing how dirty everything was, but we figured we needed to meet with her to see what redeeming qualities The Great Room has to offer (I mean, it was a top pick for The Knot in 2008, right?)

For the months of April to December, they have a tent set up on the balcony connected to The Great Room. So, if you book this room for the reception, you could have the wedding on the balcony and the reception in the actual room. Well, our wedding is going to be in January, so we can't use the balcony. So what the hell are we supposed to do for the reception? The manager told us that we could have the ceremony on the dance floor (which, in my opinion is extraordinarily tacky, but for some reason, other broke brides choose to do that). The catch is that only 70 people can be seated on the dance floor. We have about 80-90 people coming to the wedding, so the rest of them would be seated at tables. That is just way too tacky for me to even consider. That is such a bad idea that I decided at that point that The Great Room was out.

At this point, we are looking at some nice hotels in the area as another cheap way to have a nice wedding. We have a meeting next week with Hilton, and we're also waiting to hear back from Sheraton. Hopefully we can book a freaking place soon here.