Sleepless nights and 100 emails

After my last post our happy wedding planning has promptly been turned on its head. Our wedding venue decided that they no longer want to hold weddings and will be conducting the last ones in April next year.

So feeling like we had exhausted the options in Clarens. We had to go back to the drawing board. I am still quite keen on the idea of a destination wedding and having seen Joburg prices, thought I would look in the Midlands.

Midlands premier venue

Hartford House is a truly spectacular place. Wonderful gardens, rooms, food, atmosphere.... everything really.

So imagine my surprise when their venue hire came in at R20 000 (for weddings between 50 and 80) guests. R22 000 including the use of the chapel. Unlike many other venues this included tables and chairs (you would think that would be a no brainer but apparently not), staff, linens, cutlery, candelabras and on the day co-ordination! What an incredible deal :) The chef, who is consistently in the best chefs in the country was accommodating and lovely. The problem here comes in with the need to take all 15 suites for the Friday and Saturday night. At a cost of around R5 000 per couple this is out of the reach of many of our guests and with only 50 adults expected almost every guest would need to take a room. If 4 or 5 rooms stay empty though this makes the venue unaffordable for us.

Closer to home

To do a full recon I investigated venues in Gauteng. Being the ever so slighty fussy person I am, we have a few criteria that are really important to us. Nice plated meal, chapel, single wedding venue. Having only 50-60 guests we thought this would be achievable. Not that easy!!!

I looked through every list of wedding venues I could find. I ruled out any venues we didn't like the connotations around (ex friend, ex partner etc). Then I checked the minimum and maximum number of guests they would accommodate. This removed about 70% of the venues. Then I checked for multiple weddings, this removed an additional 10%. Then I checked for the possibility to do plated meals, another 10% down. The last 10% which met our needs I checked availability (for a booking 14 months in advance). I am left with 4 potential venues, none of which I am sure about availability as they have not yet responded to my emails and only half have chapels (not a super idea with Jhb summer thunderstorms).

The Joburg contenders then are The Herford Country Hotel, De Hoek, Morrells and Vivere. Venue hire varies in price (lowest De Hoek at R16 000, highest Morrells at R34 000) but with different pricing and options for food and what's included in that price.

So now what to do?

The temptation to extend our honeymoon and just get married on a beach in the Maldives is awfully tempting....

But ultimately, I want to have a day to spend with my family and closest friends and celebrate the start of our marriage.

Tough decisions to make on our side....... Who said planning a wedding was easy?

Vision and backups

After a wonderful, cold and productive weekend away we have chosen our venue! It turned out to be a fairly simple choice.

Experience always wins

Linwood Guest Farm has held a significant number of weddings on their property. When we arrived the owner and staff where knowledgeable, had answers to all our questions and could talk through options of what other brides have done. The further into this process I get, the more I realise that most brides are the same. We all like to think of ourselves as having very unique taste, but after your man pops sparkles on your finger we all seem to become one bridal mass!

Living the fairytale but with a plan B

The forest setting for a ceremony at Linwood is spectacular. With neither of us being religious, we had no need for a church or even to be in doors. Although the forest was dry when we were there the vision of how it could look convinced us that this was where we wanted to say our vows. More accurately where Chris will say his vows and I will have an ugly cry in front of the 80 people closest to me!

Despite the beauty of the setting, rain is a real threat for the day. Linwood has a beautiful, non-denominational, chapel on site. Interestingly it is one of the few wedding venues I've seen that hasn't put crosses in the ceremony areas, making it suitable for all religions.

Having vision

Despite my fiance's numerous strong points, the vision of what something could look like often fails him. I fear a career in wedding planning or interior decorating would not be a winning choice.

Linwood were great at showing us pictures of what other brides had done. I have also done quite a bit of research looking for wedding photo's of other couples at the venue on their photographers blog/facebook page. I highly recommend this, parts of a venue you wish to highlight/disguise are often similar to other brides (again, we are one mass!) and their methods can spark great ideas in you.

Easy escape

The last thing that really sold us on Linwood was the onsite accommodation. The accommodation style isn't what we would usually go for, its very farm/country chic, but the availability of 9 rooms so that all of our bridal party can choose to stay with us and ample space for both of us to get ready on the day without spotting each other was a serious selling point. I have found weddings where guests are not concerned with driving to be the most enjoyable and we plan to shuttle the remainder of our guests the 5 kilometres back into Clarens so no driving is required!

With two major aspects down the wedding feels like it is starting to take shape. Next up is hiring a wedding planner, finding an officiant (not as easy as it sounds since we want a non-denominational service in the Free-state), sending out Save-the-dates, planning the engagement party (better late than never) and investigating if I want to buy an off-the-rack dress or get one made.

More to follow

xxxx

Bride Maczar

Asking the right questions

452 days to go and we're off to look at venues on Friday. Venues will often indicate the big things (If accommodation is included, if they allow you to bring your own alcohol, if use of chapels are an additional cost etc) but can ignore the smaller details, especially in a country location not used to dealing with city brides. Being a type A (often told this stands for anal) I have created a list of questions for us to ask each of our venues.

These include:

When can we get access to the venue?
When do we have to vacate?
Will cleaning and setup be handled by the venue?
If we go over time, what is the additional cost?
What tables and chairs are available?
What table/chair covers, runners and linens are available?
What does your crockery and cutlery look like?
What is the wine list and what if there is a particular alcohol we want that they don't offer?
If it rains is there an alternative for an outdoor ceremony?
Is there an on the day co-ordinator available to make sure set up and time lines run smoothly?
Is it possible to have a 'shuttle' service for guest staying in other guest houses?
Will you have food available for guests getting ready at the venue?
How many staff members will be needed?

Then for determining what tables and formations you want

Where in the room will the bar be situated?
Where are the entrances and exits?
What are the dimensions of the room?
How large is the dance floor?
Will we need to hire a dance floor?
Where are the power outlets? (especially important for lighting and music)

After our venue viewings we will be enjoying the Clarens Christmas in July festival for the rest of the weekend and although I'm told its highly unlikely I'm holding thumbs for some snow.

Snow in Clarens, South Africa

Lost in a multi-billion dollar industry

After an extended work trip overseas I returned home to the most wonderful proposal from my boyfriend. In my absence he has built a rose garden in one section of the garden and planned a picnic for us in the late afternoon. After some oysters (my favourite) and nibbles he popped open a bottle of Tattinger and poured us both a glass. I remember thinking to myself how wonderful and romantic this was and how he should have saved it for the proposal, not suspected anything in my pink fleecey pj's and bed hair. After my first sip of champagne I thought I saw a ring in the bottom but when holding the glass up (it was an inhereted old school crystal glass) I couldn't see anything. My second sip confirmed something was definitely in the bottom and as I spotted it he got down on his knee and asked me to marry him........ a truely romantic moment! Followed by him telling me to down my vintage champagne so we could get to the ring ;)

Chris and I have been living together for almost 2.5 years and bought our first house together earlier in the year. Marriage isn't going to change the dynamics of our relationship but I am none the less, extremely excited to plan a day for us to celebrate our love with our family and friends.

We've been engaged for 5 weeks and 3 days and I'm just starting to understand how daunting and expensive this process will be! After reading various bridal blogs and magazines it was clear we needed to make quick decisions about:

1. Wedding date - this was a fairly easy decision. We knew we wanted to get married in spring, love the colours and smells of spring and its warm enough without having the males guest pass out from heat stroke. This was also influenced by the one thing I knew prior to the wedding - that we were going to the Maldives on honeymoon! I have dreamed of going to the Maldives since I was 5 and all those brochures came out with people floating in the shallow, clear water of the lagoons. September/October (spring in South Africa) is off-peak season in the Maldives and will mean quieter resorts with better prices.
2. Wedding budget - a tricky thing to determine. How to you get a rough estimate of what the wedding you've envisioned will cost and how much money you can save over 15 months? We thought about what we could reasonably save up over the time and included expected bonuses over the period and came to a number we believe can cover the bulk of the costs.
3. Wedding numbers - again, a fairly easy answer for us. We are inviting immediate family (first cousins only) and friends we see on a regular basis. Even with that narrowed group were are still looking at almost 80 invites and an expectation of around 70 guests.
4. Wedding Venue - although we haven't yet decided on this, we do think we want to get married in a little town in the Eastern Free State called Clarens. There aren't very many venues out there and the majority are barns, so a barn wedding it is for us :) Some interesting options are Andes guest house; Linwood guest farm; St Fort Wedding Venue and Oranje Gasteplaas. We have set up appointments to view Andes and Linwood and disregarded the other two because Oranje Gasteplaas is just to big for us and St Fort have never come back to me with quotes or more information despite numerous phonecalls and emails.
5. Wedding photographer - wedding blogs and magazines will drum into you that photo's are the one part of the wedding you shouldn't skimp on and that good photographers are booked well in advance. So with an unsecured venue (and therefore date) we have already booked our wedding photographer. We have gone for Adam Hilton because we loved his style and he felt like a good fit for us as a couple. Good thing we did get in early because before we had confirmed another bride was asking for his services on the same day as us.

The rest we will get to in time. I have briefly looked at wedding dresses and discovered some have a 10 month lead time, so that decision needs to be made in the next few months. But navigating dress styles and designers is not for the faint hearted and will require a different entry.

For now I'm just excited to be a B2B (wedding blog slang :) ) and starting this journey with the hopes of not becoming a bride-zilla along the way......