Wedding Venue Madness Part 1

I guess I should start blogging about wedding planning! Three weeks ago we visited a venue called Adaumont farm in Thomasville, NC. It was amazing, beautiful and was exactly what I imagined for my wedding. It was the first venue that we had explored and Justin felt that it was important to see the others even though I was ready to sign on the dotted line that day!

 I had the last weekend of July set up as the "venue weekend."  I found all the venues between Winston and Asheville that interested both my  mom and I and had them booked to perfection.  Justin then nixed a few (which now I am glad that he did!) and reduced our list from 9(!) to 6.  Our stop Friday got cancelled so we had some extra time to load up the extra washing machine that has been taking up crazy amounts of space in our tiny garage and schlep it to Hickory.  Picking up Laurie on the way we picked up the dinner of champions (Bojo's) and were on our way to Hickory. The next morning we woke up to monsoon weather.  Our first stop was in Hickory to the Mostellar Mansion.  It is a beautiful house but we would have had to break up our guests into 3 separate dining rooms and we felt that wasn't sufficient. Though the manager is a great friend of the family so it was a hard choice not to go with this venue- if anyone is having a smaller wedding I highly recommend this venue! Then we were off to Asheville with the first stop being The Crest Center and Pavilion   The weather had cleared up and was gorgeous by the time we got up there.  The place was very pretty and the views were fantastic.  It just didn't really speak to us. The people seemed very nice and easy to work with.

The ceremony site was beautiful and had a great view! I really am a mountain girl at heart!

The next stop was the Biltmore. I was expected to be and was BLOWN AWAY.  I loved these venues! There were three that would work for our numbers, Lionscrest, Deerpark, and Diana. First up was Lionscrest which had a beautiful ceremony site (inside so no rain plan needed!) and a great outdoor place for the cocktail hour and then a very pretty place for the reception.  It felt great. Good friends Jason and Katie got married here last October and loved this venue.

Then we were off to Deerpark. This venue is a square building with a courtyard in the center of the site.  It was beautiful but I had a hard time invisioning the guests being in a C shape around the courtyard. 

The ceremony site of this venue was BREATHTAKING! I loved it very much.

Diana was pretty - it was a blank slate because the tent was not furnished at the time of us looking at it, but the view was great!

Justin and I with the view from Diana in the background.

We left the Biltmore excited and thought that we found a really big contender for Adaumont farm. The consensus was that we all loved Lionscrest the most.  After this venue it was off to Brown Mountain Beach Resort. This place was about an hour away from our house in Hickory. It is adjacent to a campground and would really be a weekend getaway for the whole family and bridal party. Small cabins come with the property and most people get married on the "beach." The Beach is actually the bank of a river that courses through the property.  Unfortunately all that rain I talked about earlier- they got it too and the beach was non-existent. The river that is actually a shallow calm body of water on normal days looked like a great place to go white water rafting that day! 

I loved the place but it was a bit too rustic for Justin and Mom. Which to be fair it was a complete 180 from Biltmore to this.  I always thought I wanted a very rustic wedding with a fun weekend camping adventure.  So this fit right in for what I always thought I wanted.  I realized though I couldn't imagine Justin getting married here. Which as you will see later was the case with me and another venue on Sunday. So I moved on and we left the first day of the venue hunt with our top choices being Biltmore and Adaumont.