Besides the guest count and date, as every bride knows, one of the biggest first decisions you'll make when wedding planning is deciding where you're going to have the shindig. The Venue. The magical, romantic, place-of-your-dreams spot where you choose to pledge your life to your one and only. Easy-peasy, right? No, sadly, this magical place is also one of the first times a bride's wedding bubble gets burst.
Why might that be you ask? Money, honey.
Enter The Fernbank Museum of Natural History here in Atlanta:
Yes, you're seeing this correctly. Fernbank holds weddings in it's massive white lobby or out on a patio overlooking the state's only old-growth forest, and then brings the party inside where guests dine and dance on real limestone fossil-embedded floors under e-NOR-mous dinosaurs and a beautiful atrium skylight. Couldn't you just die?!
From the first moment I realized you could have weddings here I was hooked. The ambient glow, the history, the uniqueness, THE DINOSAURS!!! It's no secret that I'm a huge nerd and luckily, Ben embraces this side of me. Also, the first place Ben and I ever went as an official couple was his college Homecoming celebration at Fernbank. Perfect! There is even a breath-taking star gallery you could hold a cocktail hour in!
But then I checked rental prices....*POP* (that's the sound of my wedding bubble bursting)
With beverage minimums, rental fees, and staff we would already be well over $10,000 and that's WITHOUT food, rentals, entertainment, etc, etc, etc. Our modest budget just couldn't support that kind of blow.
Despite my parents' protestations that they could, as Tim Gunn would say, Make It Work, if it was what I really wanted, I knew deep down that, short of cutting the guest list down to nil and only serving crackers with cheez-whiz and water at the reception, my dream wedding under the dinosaurs wasn't going to happen. But I couldn't let it go and actually planned the wedding around Fernbank for a while, until something happened that derailed my one-track venue mind.
In the end we did NOT choose Fernbank as our venue. What changed our minds? What other place could possibly hold a candle to the dinosaurs? Will this new place actually fit our budget and allow us to have more than 4 people and real food at the wedding? Stay tuned for the dramatic conclusion...
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