Venue VENT!

I am a bit annoyed with my venue at the moment. FYI: We are having both the ceremony and reception in the same location - a hotel in our hometown. While I always planned to be married in a church, it just ended up making too much sense to have everything in one central location.

The ceremony will be in the atrium by the waterfall, cocktail hour in a foyer-open area with lots of windows and the reception in the ballroom.


Why am I angry?

Well, I hadn't heard anything from them since the end of February/beginning of March. I had emailed the lady in charge of set-up: I need the length of the aisle and I also have a different way I would like the reception to be arranged.
I need the aisle length so I can start working on painting my aisle runner. Most hotel receptions are similar: round tables with white tablecloths, maybe an overlay, some chair covers. However, the hotel has rectangular tables and black stretch linen and chair covers that I loved, so I had a different arrangement in mind. Never heard from her.

Emailed her again.
Never heard from her.

No biggie, as I had gone waaay downhill in planning energy. I'll get in touch with them once the school year ends, and I really get back in the swing of planning.

Cut to last Monday, 6/7; we were in town and decided to go by the hotel and just check in. The main chick was gone for lunch. Turns out the other lady I'd been dealing with no longer worked there and had been gone for about 2 months. Okay, that would explain why I never heard from her.

Anywho, I'm catching up the new lady up with our plans so far, and we start discussing the rectangular tables and stretch linen. As I'm showing her some sample set-ups, she starts in on how she doesn't think they have enough stretch linen and chair covers to use for a reception, have I thought about the white linens they have, have I looked at some other linen companies, etc. I politely explain that no, I don't care for the white tablecloths - very restaurant-like and that I hadn't gone to linen companies as part of the reason that I chose this location was because they had the stretch linen and chair covers already.

Around this time, the main lady got in from lunch and said she'd finish up with us. So we head into her office and run through the same information with her. So I mention how lady1 was all unsure about the number of black linens available and she says, "Yeah, we only have 7." The hell you say. "Yeah, I mean we can order more from the linen company we work with, but we would, of course, have to pass that cost on to you."

Wait. What? We discuss it a bit but not in depth. She doesn't know how much it would cost, blah, blah, blah. After we leave, I ask FI if he remembers that this is not how this chick originally presented the options of the black linens. I get home and check with my mom, who went with me on the 1st visit. I later check with my MOH who also went with us. Everyone has the same response as I did: Wait. Now say what now?!? I 'm quite pissed about having this new additional cost to consider.
I was trying to convince myself that maybe we all had just changed the way we thought about the information over time, but I found a blog post from December 28, 2009. It reads as follows:

So I decided to stay in hometown today and try to set up some appointments to see some venues. I knew it would be hard to make time once we're back at work; I'd have to take off.

I am soooo glad that I did it! I put a tentative hold on the ballroom (1/2) and atrium at the Hotel hotel. I was actually leaning towards the other hotel, but the room was smaller (would hold max 150) and had a $5000 minimum for the month of December (HH's minimum is $4000 and can hold up to 350). The HH has these sleek black stretch linens and chair covers that are included in the rental price! ( All I would need are sashes (maybe). When you look at that and the fact that you are getting a bigger room for less money AND you have the waterfall - the HH had to take the lead. Here are some shots of the room.

I have not been able to get myself ready to talk them about this yet. ugh.

<3CRod