Location, Location, Location

I just realized we never blogged about finally making our reception site official.  This has probably been the hardest decision to date (or at least a close second to the dress indecision!).  We started this search almost immediately after we got engaged because venues in St. Louis get booked very quickly.  I had some idea what to expect from helping my good friend Darcie shop around for reception venues for her wedding but somehow was still shocked by the cost.  I had dreams of locations like this:

a beautiful barn or maybe a cool warehouse look like this:

Unfortunately St. Louis doesn't have many cool barn venues and the warehouse esque locations we found were extremely expensive. I emailed tons of different locations from banquet halls, to restaurants, to hotels and we kept running into 2 problems.  Problem number 1: the locations were just insanely expensive.  Problem 2 was that most locations had a 200 person minimum. I found this to be rather frustrating.  The amount of money we would be paying per person was already more than I could fathom, but then they were telling us we had to pay for approximately 50 more people than were actually going to be at the wedding.  We both got frustrated several times and would just give up the search for a couple of weeks. 

We finally found a location that was within our budget and didn't require crazy minimums.  It also had several other perks including it was a hotel so much more convenient for our guests.  We found this location in September but despite the price and the perks I wasn't quite ready to commit.  A hotel ballroom really wasn't what I had envisioned and I just wasn't in love with the idea.  Then one day I had a realization-  as amazing as the farm or the warehouse locations look in the end the location really doesn't matter all that much.  In the end the important thing is that we will be with people we love and that everyone is enjoying themselves and if we have those things where ever the reception is, is the perfect location!  So, with this realization we decided to book The Holiday Inn Viking.

I haven't had a chance to take any pictures myself, but here are a couple I found online:

We obviously aren't having our ceremony there, but this is the space outside of the ballroom

and here is the ballroom:

So another decision crossed off the to do list.