Ceremony

As soon as we figured out where we would be holding our reception we started thinking about where to have the ceremony. Since neither Jus not I really go to church we decided that was out. We tried to think of somewhere close to our reception venue that would hold a lot of people.

We weren't having much luck until I remembered about our friends L & J's house.

L & J are our family's good friends and a couple of years back they bought an old Baptist church that had been transformed to a local theater company's theater and transformed it to their house (they call it The Chouse, which is how I'll refer to it from now on).

Can you spot Jus?

Their living room is now where the sanctuary was. They've transformed the space to a cozy, family home. The Chouse is used for some community events but they've never had a wedding there. Luckily for us they were extremely excited to have our ceremony there.

As soon as we decided to have the ceremony at the Chouse we called J up and went to check the space out. Once we were there we knew it would be the place where we got married.

We'll arrange chairs facing this stained glass window and Jus & I will stand in front of the window to say our vows.

(I promise this isn't selective color, I had to lighten up the picture so much so you could see anything but the stained glass window!)

What's even cooler is that our friend (and Chouse owner) L is going to do the officiating.

So that was that, we had a ceremony venue, a reception venue and an officiant.

Once you started planning did everything start falling into place?

The Tale of Two Weddings: The Part Where We Actually Figure It Out

The most obvious choice for where to have our wedding is our hometown. Our town is home to about 30,000 people and our downtown is in the process of being revitalized. Jus bought a house here last year and we try to support local business and our community as much as possible.

My family is in a unique position in our town.

My parents have run our diner for the last 24 years and it is an institution among locals. Three years ago their restaurant was featured on national tv and since then we have seen a lot of tourists.

My grandpa owns about a dozen buildings in our downtown and is really responsible for the revitalization of our downtown. My uncle sits on the city council and he and my aunt own about 6 buildings downtown.

When Jus and I started reconsidering the location of our wedding the possibility of having our wedding in our hometown came up. We were kind of mixed. Neither of us is an active member at a church and most of the wedding venues in this area are a little over used. But then we remembered one of the buildings my grandpa owns.

The first floor of the building is home to a meat shop and the second floor is one huge room that totals 2300 square feet. Neither Jus nor I had been to this building in a couple of months but we remembered it as a possibility.

You enter through a door on the side of the building

into a little lobby area that will be cleared out.

The second floor has two walls of windows, a wooden herringbone floor, dark wood trim, and the original tin ceiling. We swung by the space with my parents and within five minutes of being there we had decided to use the space for our reception.

(I don't know why it looks like it was snowing inside)

I know what you're thinking. It doesn't look anything like a wedding venue. It's going to be a lot of work. My grandpa restores buildings and Jus and I have already volunteered as much time as needed over the summer. We're going to sand and varnish the floor, paint the walls, and my grandpa is going to rewire the room and fix the tin ceiling. This is truly going to be a DIY wedding.

I have no doubt the building will look awesome come our wedding. I have visions of draped fabric, candlelight, long tables, and twinkle lights.

So if you'll trust me a a little I'd love for you to come along for the ride.

The Tale of Two Weddings: Part 3

When we left off I was starting to feel stressed out about planning a Northern Michigan wedding in 8 months at a resort.

Jus and I want our wedding to be a display of who we are, personal touches and a showcase of the places and people we love.

The reason I love Northern Michigan so much is it's wildness, the small towns and the lack of people. When my family goes on vacation we try to stay in small places that give you a feel of the land and the people. The more I thought about a resort wedding the more I worried that it would be too cookie cutter and wouldn't express my love for the wilderness of Northern Michigan.

The resorts we looked at are very beautiful, they offer amenities that smaller venues don't and would have someone on staff to help me plan our wedding. But the thought that kept playing over and over in my head was that between the distance and having someone I had never met helping to plan that the wedding would not truly be an expression of Jus & me.

How could I convey the breezy, colorful, elegant, vintage feeling I wanted when I had trouble expressing my vision to Jus?

I was loosing sleep thinking about planning a wedding in Northern Michigan in 8 months and in order to maintain my sanity we started talking about other options.

A further destination with a smaller guest list, a hometown wedding with a large guest list or scratch it all and elope.

Did you hit a lot of roadblocks in figuring out where to hold your wedding?