Wedding Planning in Atlanta
My lady and I have decided to get married. The question became “What do we do next?” You can do either an at home wedding or a destination wedding. As we both love to travel it was a no brainer that we would be doing a destination wedding. Planning a destination wedding can be hard. We did some research on what was the best way to accomplish this and it feels like so much. I felt it would be necessary to capture this experience.
First things first you need to decide on a location. For us we originally wanted to be somewhere tropical. So with that we went through the list of the usual suspects of fun in the sun. Mexico, Costa Rica, Aruba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. Originally, we settled on Jamaica. That is until we talked to my mom. For those of you that don’t know my mom is wheelchair bound and lives in a skilled nursing facility in Atlanta. After talking with her and hearing how excited she was about the idea of my getting married. We changed our minds again to Atlanta, GA. I’ve been to Atlanta several times and would often visit several times a year to see and check on my mom. To make it easier for her to come we landed on Atlanta.
After choosing our destination the next thing was to land on a date. We sent out our save the dates prematurely with The home of all things wedding | Zola to let people know we were getting married. However, upon our trip to Atlanta we had to adjust our date in order to secure the venue. Lesson Learned lock in your venue before sending save the dates.
I want to level set with everyone. Having a wedding can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be. We chose to have a venue that was both picturesque and allowed us to hold the 150 + people we are expecting. We took the weekend to go to Atlanta and see what the venues looked like. Be prepared to pay for what you want. Also, when doing your research do not forget to add tax because it adds up quickly. It looked like most of our options had the same price but the incidentals like valet parking, cutlery and plates among other things will add up on you.
We originally liked a few for different places for several reasons over the internet. However, when we got into the space, we noticed things that slid our like-o-meter up and down. For instance, one venue we went to was beautiful. It had an indoor space and outdoor space but once we get in the space, we realized it was way bigger than we needed and did not offer any picture taking spaces so we would need to leave to get the good pictures. Another location we went to was great in a lot of different ways but had no natural light. Which was a big deal for us.
One thing you need to understand about a wedding. As much of a celebration a wedding is, it is also a production. One in which you are trying to capture so much in a short time. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to facilitate taking pictures and getting all our stuff together on that day.
Our ultimate choice was with the venue SUMMEROUR STUDIO | Novare Events. The venue met out needs for natural light, simple industrial design, picturesque landscape of both city and vegetation and lastly was wheelchair accessible.
This is as far as we got with our wedding planning. Next is to find a wedding planner to assist with the coordination of vendors and hotels. This is an extraordinary task, and we will be interviewing soon. We are just under a year away from our March 13, 2022 date, and there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. I will keep you posted on our progress.