Reality Check

Once we started the process of looking at venues, I quickly realized that one of the first questions that places ask you are, "How many guests?" We estimated around 160 people. According to this number, there were certain rooms that the venues had that held a certain number of people. Some of the rooms charged more if you had less people but wanted the larger room. It was quite a complicated process. I was beginning to learn that this was not as easy as I had thought it was going to be. The other shocker was the price tags! Holy guacamole! It costs how much??? Yikes. This is where I finally had the reality check that the rest of my friends and family had already had. There was no way that we would be able to pull of this wedding in 10 months. Fall of 2012 was out of the question. Honestly, I am sure many people can pull of a wedding in that time frame but for us it was a matter of money and of what kind of wedding we wanted. In order to have a venue that I wanted, we needed more time. Not to mention, many of the places were booked for Fall 2012 due to Fall becoming an increasingly popular wedding month. Ok, ok, you were right. Spring 2013 it was!


The following weekend, my Mom and I headed out to look at Normandy Farms in Blue Bell, PA. This was by far the furthest destination. It took us about 45 minutes to get there. We pulled up and saw this huge red and white wall that enclosed the whole farm. It was gorgeous. It had such a rustic feeling to it. Once they started showing us around, we learned quickly that there were a number of rooms that this venue had. The rooms were very rustic but also very dark. They looked just like barn on the inside and had beautiful exposed wood and high ceilings but the decor and wood was overall very dark. I loved how different the place was but the room that would accommodate our number of guests just felt small. I am not sure if that was due to how dark it was or not.

One of the ballrooms

The next place we went to visit was The Radnor Hotel in Wayne, PA. For this trip, Mr. Lemon came along with me and my Mom. We had a great tour with a woman. They used an iPad to show us some pictures of previous weddings that they had hosted. It was very hi-tech! The room was bring and had a lot of windows. The outdoor space was amazing. There were paved patios with benches and trees spread all over the expansive outdoor area. There was also a deck with a covering which would be good if it decided to rain (knock on wood)! This venue was also the closest in terms of location to the Church.

Amaze outside area

After we left the Radnor Hotel, we felt more confused than ever. Up until this point we had a clear front runner but now this venue had thrown us for a loop. It was clear we were going to have to do some thinking before deciding on the place where we wanted to host our reception. One of the first of many decisions! To boot, I am probably one of the most indecisive decision makers out there. This was going to be interesting...