Picking a Wedding Venue

Hooray! We finally picked a venue and nailed down a date for our wedding! Side note: I'm going to say "I" a lot in this post instead of "we" because I am more opinionated and well, frankly, particular than Mark is :) Anyway, we've only been engaged for a month, but this has been stressing me out because I knew I wanted to get married in the fall and I was worried all of the venues would already be booked. It's nuts how far out they're reserved. I alluded to it last week but didn't want to say where we decided on because we didn't have the contract signed yet. We will be getting married at The Depot in Minneapolis next October! Phew, I feel so much better now that that's all squared away.

I hope you find this semi interesting or maybe even helpful if you're a fellow MN bride!

The things on our wishlist were: plenty of space because of our guest list, location in Minneapolis or St. Paul, the ability to bring in our own vendors for certain elements like the cake and linens, an attached hotel, and we wanted it to have a traditional vibe. 

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Our first appointment was at Windows on Minnesota, which is a ballroom on the 50th floor of the IDS in downtown Minneapolis. I loved the idea of having the reception up high with beautiful views because we got engaged in a similar setting. The views were stunning but I couldn't get over the ballroom carpet and we would have had to have the dance floor in a separate room from dinner because of our number of guests. That seemed really awkward to us so ultimately we passed.

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We then looked at the St. Paul Hotel which I wanted to love because the area is beautiful for pictures and the hotel itself is so gorgeous, but I just didn't love the ballroom. There were a lot of colors in the carpet and on the walls that I didn't want to have to work around when decorating. Also, yes, the carpet played a part in the decision. That may seem ridiculous but I was so hung up on the carpet at all of these places! I know that I said we wanted traditional, but it was a little too traditional and ornamental. 

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Our last stop was the St. Paul Athletic Club and this was definitely our runner up. I love love loved the hotel lobby which we could have used for cocktail hour but we had similar issues with the ballroom that the other two locations had. The carpet was pretty terrible and there was a lot of green marble and green in the carpeting that I didn't want to have to worry about when coming up with a design theme. 

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Now on to the winner! I had a feeling it was going to be my favorite because I had always loved the space and was really hoping that I'd love it even more now that I was looking at it as en engaged woman ;) It's an old train depot that was converted into a hotel and event space with a large beautiful ballroom (pictured above). I loved that it had marble floors (no terrible ballroom carpet!), that it was big enough where we could have everything all in one space, it has two hotels attached to the event space, it's downtown, and it had a neutral palette to work with. I cannot wait to see our vision come together in this beautiful space!

I feel like I can relax a little bit now, but if I know myself I know it won't last long!

xo Catherine