Looking for ideas

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Particularly from Buffalo/WNY area people.

We still haven’t set a date. We’re currently working on compiling a preliminary guest list so that we can at least have a rough idea of numbers. A small, intimate gathering is clearly out of the picture. 😉

Ideally, we want next spring/summer. Since I have no idea what I’m going to be doing, it’s probably best to try and do it when school won’t be in session. On the other hand, we could always do a postponed honeymoon. Since lots of places are filling up, the exact date is probably going to very much depend on availability.

Here are some of the things we’re looking for:

  • A site where we can have both the ceremony and the reception
  • A place that has the capacity for a large group
  • Indoors (much of the talking we’ve been doing involves activities that will be best served in an indoor location…plus, there’s the weather. If it’s raining, I want to be inside. If it’s hot and humid, I want air conditioning!)
  • Someplace that isn’t crazy expensive

We’re looking at WNY…this is where we live, and its more centrally-located to the majority of people who would be coming. (many friends and members of both of our families would have to travel…) It doesn’t have to be right IN Buffalo. I’m not opposed to considering PA, but the options are much more limited there.

I’m not imagining a terribly formal affair. What’s most important to us is that our friends and family have a good time. I want the food to be tasty, but it doesn’t have to be fancy-schmancy. I would happily serve beef on weck and wings if I could find a place where I could do that.

I’ve checked out the local forums on sites like the knot and the wedding channel, and they are NO help. They’re populated by young Bridey McBrides and just ugh.

So…if you have any suggestions, leave me a comment or send an email! 🙂

*UPDATE* Pearl Street is looking like it could be a very reasonable option, depending on availability of course. Thanks to Jen, for making me look more closely at it!

11 thoughts on “Looking for ideas”

  2. Holy crap, have I not shared any of my research with you yet? 😉

    Always good to check out the Wedding section of the News to see where people are having weddings….

    These few WONDERFUL PLACES that I have looked into perhaps, um, yeah… might be in your price range, but they certainly are not within mine!

    YOU SHOULD SERIOUSLY CONSIDER—–Pearl Street!!!

    The Church??

    Marcy Casino??

    Historical Society

    International Insitute (might be too small if sit down dinner)

  3. As a fellow teacher, I know what you mean about timing. Our wedding was during Christmas vacation…December 28…off from school and the church still decorated from Christmas…and we went on our honeymoon during Easter vacation. It worked for us!

  4. What makes it especially hard is that I don’t have a *definite* schedule. I have to try to plan around what I MIGHT be doing next year!

  5. Yay! 🙂

    Pearl Street is a lovely place and will be really pretty too! When you put your post up, it sounded like you were asking for exactly what they could offer. (Geez, maybe I should be doing events for them?) Perfect location, pretty deck. PLENTY of hotel space. Easy to have a ceremony and reception there! And NOT crazy expensive at ALL.

    Hurrah!

    The Convention Center is also HUGE and has a similar stations set up (sit down gets pricy though!)

    No idea about the prices of the Botanical Gardens either but they have a 27 ft waterfall!

    And Erin is not allowed to get married in the hometown of my future intended. Not that we would have a wedding at Peak -n- Peak, but… 😉 I can get ya a special deal for a weekend overnight if you like! (A Mark family connection with the owner.)

    You should also check out Ellicottville etc…and maybe even Canadia? Right across the border?

  6. DO NOT POSTPONE YOUR HONEYMOON. under no circumstance should you do this. i have a lot of friends who have said that they’ll take their honeymoon “later” and “later” never happens. also, make sure you go away. somewhere. anywhere. just go. you’ll be so glad you did. 🙂

    also, don’t worry about what you might be doing next year too much. next year will work itself out and you’ll have plenty of advanced notice to give employers. they will wait for you! please trust me on this!!

    and btw, love the ipod/dj idea. went to a wedding 2 months ago where the bride/groom did that. no one missed the dj.

    that’s my 2 cents. i’ll be quiet now. 😀

  7. I don’t know your area well enough to offer specifics, but look around for cool buildings. museums, and historical sites, even if they aren’t on wedding site lists. We got married at the Peabody Library in Baltimore: http://www.library.jhu.edu/bin/t/t/gpl_library_smaller.jpg
    Fitting, eh?
    Plus everyone recognized it when it showed up in a 2 second scene in Sleepless in Seattle the following year 😉
    We also preferred shelling out the cash to a deserving place.

    re: ipod idea
    We rented a sound system that came with a guy to run it. We handed him our pre-made tapes (this was pre-mp3 era) to play. It was a fraction of what a DJ would’ve cost us, and he didn’t say a word. In particular, he didn’t say anything incredibly stupid 😉 He also payed attention to what we said about the volume of the music (ie, our guests still had voices by the end of the evening), which DJs have a tendency to ignore. I’ve been to a lot of weddings that were more or less spoiled by diva DJs.

    Big thing for keeping down the costs is to be flexible. We had a relatively cheap wedding for the number of people we had. It’s amazing how much cheaper it got in my family’s retelling of the costs over the 2-3 years right after it 😉

  8. I’m not local so I can’t recommend specific places, but I can tell you general things that worked for me in my search.

    For ceremony & reception in the same place: all my top choices wound up being hotels. Big hotels KNOW weddings, and might even have someone whose job it is to coordinate weddings and nothing else. They’ll do food, which means not having to search for, contract with, or hassle about delivery from a separate caterer. And because they’ll do that, they’ll often do a package deal. (Plus, when you need to arrange other deliveries, like cake or flower delivery, such hotels are used to dealing with all that, too.)

    I happened to find a hotel where part of the function space they offered was the penthouse suite. It was three rooms on the top floor– penthouse and two other rooms, all sort of connected by a hallway that partly opened out. And we got to stay in the penthouse suite that night as a part of the total deal. Even hotels that don’t have this nifty bit of physical logistics may be willing to negotiate a hotel room for your wedding night as part of the deal.

    Also, I think I said this already, but my wedding date being flexible meant that I had more negotiating room, and could go with whatever they had available– and that got me part of my deal cheaper, because it was a weekend that wasn’t in high demand, and because another function was going on below us so neither my function nor the other one had to worry about annoying ordinary guests with noise.

    Oh, and speaking of sites– one thing the knot (I think it was them) did help me with was they had a timeline planner type of tool. Their articles mostly didn’t help me, but at the time (this was 2003) their checklist thingy, with advance reminders for the stuff you put in and everything, actually did help me out. I’m sure tons of sites have something like that, so you don’t particularly need *theirs*, but it took a little of the stress off me because I’m not a terribly organized person. Being able to just plug things into an existing system like that really helped.

  9. I’ve been to some really nice events at Pearl Street and the food was very good. Also — you could get married on the deck with the skyline behind you if the weather was nice (or do cocktails out there).

    A few other thoughts:
    — Statler – Golden Ballroom or the room on the other side (both lovely)
    — Historical Society
    — Butler Mansion (@ Delaware & North)
    — lobby of Ellicott Square Building (quintessentially Buffalo)
    — Shea’s Buffalo (I know somebody who had the ceremony and reception on the stage — how COOL is that? Wouldn’t really work for a sit-down dinner, though)
    — Marcy Casino – but if it’s nice, you could have the ceremony next to Hoyt Lake. We saw somebody do that last week and it was beautiful (and so Buffalo!)

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