Bride-to-be Blogger Carolyn: Finding the Venue

Carolyn and her mom revisiting Winterthur this June.

There are so many great venues in the Philadelphia area! Chris and I really had to narrow down our search so that we focused on what was important to us, and what kind of event we wanted to have. We decided to look for a venue that could have both the ceremony and the reception on site, an outdoor space, and a great rain plan. I started out just looking at local photographers’ blogs, trying to see some real wedding pictures (because the ones on the venue websites aren’t always the most true to life). This helped me compose a list of venues that met our top needs and I promptly scheduled some tours.

I know we have extensively covered my hatred of being cold, so you can understand my reluctance to schlep through snowy venues in early January. However, I know that June is a very popular month for weddings, so I felt some pressure to get some vendors booked early on. So, Chris and I dressed in layers and started our search.

I’m a little (ok, a lot) impulsive, so after loving the first place we saw I was ready to put down a deposit. However, Chris—always the voice of reason—encouraged me to press on and see the other places before we decided. We toured about five venues before we came upon Winterthur. To be honest, we almost canceled our appointment that day. I wasn’t too impressed by the pictures I’ve seen of weddings there and it was just too cold to truck it over to Delaware (yes, I was being a little dramatic). Thank goodness we didn’t cancel! We loved it!

Winterthur is a large garden and American museum that was a former home to one of the du Ponts. It has a gorgeous reflecting pool where we will be having our ceremony and cocktail hour and a large visitor’s center with huge windows where our reception will be held. The rain plan was a huge selling point for us—in case of inclement weather, we’ll be using the museum for our ceremony and cocktail hour. They’ve even got an in-house catering company, Restaurant Associates, so we didn’t have to worry about finding our own.

How did your venue hunt go? Did you have any priorities that you based your search on?

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