on Wedding Venue Visits

Wedding planning is hard... especially since you only do it once (hopefully).  Visiting potential venues is both easier and harder than I imagined.  It's easier in that, making appointments isn't really a hassle, and the personnel are very friendly and generally helpful - kind of.  It's hard in that you have to remember that they're on an agenda of trying to win your business while they're wowing you with all the best-looking places of their space (including hand-painted bathroom fixtures) and reasons why they're the best place in town.  Despite helpful guides of what to ask venues, there's still much more to a venue visit than keeping track of the questions you need to have answered.  After my first visit to two potential venues, here are my reminders/tips to myself for future visits, and for others who might be wondering what to do the first time you go to see a place.  Some of these might be silly, and others might seem common-sensey, but somehow they're easy to forget when you're marveling at the hand-painted roses on a toilet.

1. EAT FIRST - It's hard to think straight on an empty stomach, especially if the venue is going to start advertising its catering business (if you're going to have a separate catering business, this might apply less).  We went on empty stomachs, so when the venue showed us its very lengthy and formidable menu items, Mr. Hubby-to-Be instantly fell in love with the first place, or the sound of it, just at the mention of food.  After we got a little lunch in us afterwards, we were able to weigh other aspects of the site in addition to its menu, but before then, we were thinking with our stomachs, not our hearts or our brains. Food is very important to me us, so thinking with our stomachs might not be all that bad, but is definitely something we want to avoid.  Mr. Hubby-to-Be, also, decided not to look at the menu for the second potential venue until later in order to avoid the problem altogether.


2. ACCEPT ANY COMPLIMENTARY SERVICE - This only happened at the first venue we went to, but was a major selling point of the place for me.  The sales director, before we sat down to discuss the pricing, offered us something to drink.  I was a little thrown off by the offer and couldn't think of what I might want, so I just asked for water, and Mr. Man insisted he didn't need anything.  It was only after the server brought the water that I realized how helpful it was to have seen them actually bring me a drink - because they way they treat you now is (supposedly) indicative of how they will treat your guests.  I was very happy with the way that even a simple water came with a selection of lime or lemon wedges and the server asked very professionally if I would like either, and took a set of tongs to place my choice gently into the water, before gently setting the glass in front of me.  So yes, if you are offered a drink or snack, do accept, because you get a chance to see the staff's manners, and dress; the way you feel when being served by them is the experience your guests would be having as well.


3. BRING SOMETHING TO TAKE NOTES ON - You get told things, you observe things, and everything can happen pretty fast.  Prices, linen colors available, minimums, maximums, timelines, outlines, thoughts, feelings, annoyances - if you're like me, it can be very overwhelming and then quite difficult to remember everything that happens at once.  You'll want to take the time to slow down and process everything.  What did you like? What didn't you like?  What of the dislikes can be overlooked?  What did you like that you can't live without?  Logistically, what works?  Don't be pressured by the sales person's pace.  Ask questions and re-ask if you need to, and then write answers down so you remember it later when you're trying to compare and pick a venue.  One venue gave us a sheet of prices and food right up front, which helped for note-taking, but another merely gave a pamphlet with no writing space. So I included in my bible binder of wedding-planning, a notebook of lined paper.  I'm thinking of three different ways to take notes:
   • Make a worksheet of all the questions you have for a venue, then fill in the blanks.
   • Make a sheet with Pros/Cons, Likes/Dislikes columns, and fill them in as you see the place.
   • Use a blank sheet of paper, write like you're taking notes in class, and try to make sense of it later...
   So, I like the first one most, but that leads me to another problem I had at my first visit where I got too stuck on the list of questions I felt like I was supposed to ask. 


4. GO IN WITH AN OPEN MIND, DON'T GET TOO STUCK ON A LIST OF QUESTIONS - I got kind of scared by the whole "What's included in the fees?" question, specifically, for some reason, linens.  I think I asked our sales director at the first venue around 3 times if linens were included in the price he was giving.  He must think I'm obsessed with tablecloths.  It was in part because I was nervous and couldn't quite remember what else was on THE LIST to ask, but remember to get the person's contact info (business card will usually be distributed, probably) so you can ask questions later if something comes up.


5. ASK IF THE DRESSING ROOMS ARE AVAILABLE TO SEE - I totally didn't realize that a venue would be showing itself off with events almost-underway.  This provided a good opportunity to understand what the rooms look like when set up (although there are pictures online, it's good to get the sense of what it's like in person), however it also made it so some areas were off limits for viewing.  In the first venue visit, it was nice to see what the dressing room was like.  Even though it's a small detail, it's still an important part of the big day: there will be pictures taken in the dressing room, you want to be sure it will fit all your bridesmaids and helpers, and you want to be comfortable while you're getting ready.  And you never know, there might be hand-painted toilets. 


6. KEEP IN MIND WHAT YOU WANT - While it is good to keep an open mind, if you have a specific image in mind, like I do, don't be swayed by their hand-painted bathroom fixtures into sacrificing the look-and-feel you wanted.  The venue we saw so far was certainly pretty and fancy, but the walls and pillars overall are a little dark in color (black/gold coloring) for what I had in mind (with potentially using khaki suits/vests on the dudes, I didn't expect to have much black at the wedding at all). Basically, don't try and fit a square peg into a round hole - if you have something you want, don't try and mash your image into a setting that doesn't fit it. 

on Beginning Steps of Planning a Unique Wedding

I'm finding it incredibly hard to plan a "unique" wedding when there are so many wedding that have been done already, and most inspiration ultimately comes from things people have done already...

However, I have had a color scheme set in my mind for several years already (pink, orange, and green) and have within the past month since the engagement come up with the idea that I would like it to be more or less a blend of modern & classic with both Asian and Western feels... since that's ultimately what my hubby-to-be and I are: totally contradictory and confusing people (well, okay not exactly, but... more to the point...). I've decided that I want bamboo to be a central decor motif in the wedding and the source of natural, Asian-y green with bright pinks and oranges (flowers, ribbons, and other possible accents) to fill the modern, Western part. 

So the second problem here is that inspiration for my vision is coming from tidbits of art and my life Honestly, my first inkling to use bamboo was when I was freaking out about wedding planning while in the shower and noticed my bamboo shower curtain went really well with the leftover caps of Herbal Essences shampoo/conditioner bottles that have piled up in my bottle-graveyard.

Looking up "Bamboo Weddings" or wedding with my desired color scheme doesn't give me a really good sense of how to blend the two together, especially because I already have something in mind, but I still couldn't really solidify what I want as the look-and-feel of this. And yes, I may be going about this backwards, as I haven't chosen a venue yet, and I realize the venue may play a big part in affecting the look-and-feel of the wedding... which is perhaps why I want to have a solid sense of the aesthetics I want myself, before I start trying to explain it to someone else... But it would be easier to show others, rather than explain it, certainly, but that's where my dilemma lies, because no such pictures of what I'm looking for exist...

This is where my genius, brilliant art skills come in... or not. As I haven't lifted my paintbrush for 6 or so years (the last picture I painted was actually a present for my Hubby-to-Be on his birthday, about 6 years ago). So I'm not very confident in my drawing skills as of late, but I still got the Photoshop & "other design" skills, so I started messing around with fonts... And I created this header (I suppose you could call it our "wedding logo" though I don't really like that name) that will be appearing on our stationery items!  Using 5 different fonts*, I was finally happy enough with the general mix of simplicity, fanciness, modernism, and classiness (as a designer, I hate telling others to make contradicting designs, but I have no problems subjecting myself to this torture). Now that I had something in mind, I pressed my watercolor paper up against the screen and began to trace!

*Van den Velde Script for the capital C, Respective for the capital K, Montez for the Asian-feel lowercase letters, Precious for the ampersand, Respective Swashes for the extra flourishes off of each letter which had to be carefully planned and placed.

This is a bad/amazing trick I've been using for years to save paper and fake scripting/handwriting skills.)  Though I wasn't 100% satisfied with some of the curves, and thickness of the design (I will have to re-vector the logo when I need it for print use), so I only did a general tracing to get the sizing of the letters and curves as I had designed them. After working out the letters as I really wanted them with pencil, I painted the bamboo in, and then the ampersand, and finally the lettering (of course, lighter background items before darker foreground items).

This is now the cover of my wedding planning binder I will cart with me to any planning activity (venue visits, florist trips, etc.) so that I can easily present what has been in my head without using the contradictory terms that have been fighting with each other inside my mind.

For the inside of my binder, I'm using this guide I found on Pinterest for content.  She has some really great links to print-outs and an outline on how to stay organized, and what kinds of things you will need to consider - super useful.

Unlike her, however, I bought all my materials at K-Mart, and am using my on means of fancy-ing and personalizing the binder (I'm not too into the glitzy shimmery binder she's got there).  The binder, as you can see, is one with the clear plastic so you can put in your own paper/image into the front. 

The separator-tabs I bought came as a set of 5 (I had to buy two sets), and then I proceeded to cut each tab in half so that all 10 would be readily visible at first glance (using a nail-clipper is really handy to round out edges).  I made a mistake in lettering my tabs, however. I did have the foresight to understand that it would be impossible to write on nail polish (well, not impossible, but much harder, and definitely not erasable), but I didn't realize that $2 nail polish will make Sharpie on smooth surface run.  So I started by using pencil to get the letters to fit on the label right before using anything permanent (I also wanted the capital letters to be as fancy as the cover's) and went over them with a Sharpie for the dark black and for the permanence. Then I proceeded to erase the underlying pencil (lightly), and go over the tabs with nail polish in the accent colors I want. I got through the first two tabs before I realized the running/smudging was out of hand, so I decided to put scotch tape over the lettering before I proceeded with the rest of the nail polish.