A Place to Party: The Criteria

We've already gone through how we found our ceremony church, and I'll let you know our reception search was somewhat similar.  I made it a lot harder than it needed to be by exploring so many places, but in the end we went with our guts and chose one of the first places we found.  It sounds like a lot, but we ended our search for venues and signed the contract exactly one month after getting engaged.  And if you remember, we spent the first week in Disney World - so all of this was done in three weeks or so!  I literally have no idea how, time must have stood still because it felt like such a long process.

So maybe one of the reasons I got overwhelmed was because in New Orleans, we have a lot of options for types of venues:

Plantations

Destrehan Plantation. Photo via Carolynn Seibert.  This is in my hometown and the plantation where they shot "Interview with the Vampire"

Historic Houses

The Degas House, photo via Nicole Nichols Photography

Fancy Hotels

Roosevelt Hotel.  Photo via Mark Eric Photography.

And some that you would just have to list as "other":

Mardi Gras World Wedding, photo via Studio Tran.

Plantations are beautiful and historic, but most are well outside of the city, which makes it hard to get to and nearly eliminates the option of a church ceremony. If you are looking for a plantation wedding reception and a catholic church ceremony - I would recommend those in my home town: St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, and the nearby Ormond Plantation or Destrehan Plantation.  For those that do want to do a ceremony and reception in the same place, plantations make great options.

There are some beautiful historic houses on St. Charles Avenue, uptown and nearby St. Francis Church.  However, I wasn't drawn to these because they are in fact houses, so there are several rooms and patios to roam between and mingle.  That doesn't create the feel that I wanted for our wedding, with no large space for a dance floor - and with 200 guests, it would be a little bit tight!  If this fits your guest list and feel of your wedding, some to check out are the Degas House, the Elms Mansion, and the Columns Hotel (Mrs. Archer's wedding venue!).

There are hotels in the French Quarter by the dozens, and I did email several for their prices.  And I didn't hear back from most of the ones I contacted! I guess they just get overwhelmed with emails, but that wasn't a good sign for what was to come.  If I had been very interested in any venue, I could have called and probably gotten in touch with someone easier.  But the thought of a hotel ballroom wasn't high up there for me.  I'm okay with the idea of a ballroom, but I didn't like that there might be another wedding going on in the room next door, or that you might have to go out into the hotel lobby for the restrooms.  For our reception, I liked the idea of it being self-contained.

So for most of my search, I stayed within the "other" category.
In the search, I developed some criteria that helped us eventually choose our venue:

1. In downtown or uptown New Orleans.  
2. Indoor site as I didn't want to worry about the crazy unpredictable weather here.  But I gave bonus points for those sites that had an outdoor patio or courtyard.  
3. Large enough for our 200 guests.  Simple enough. 
4. Beautiful and elegant.  I was much more interested in finding a location that is already stunning, and letting that shine through instead of a plain venue that needed to be decorated.
5. All inclusive/self-contained.  As I mentioned earlier, I like the idea of having our "space" for the wedding, but also not needing to bring in too much.  
6. Flexible catering packages.  Many venues here come with catering included, and I liked those that allowed us to make choices for what to include instead of standard A, B, or C choices.
7. Not breaking the bank!  It's hard to know what that means until you start getting quotes from different places, but we started to form an idea of where we were comfortable with pricewise. 

So I went along my merry way, emailing all types of venues and comparing their prices and offerings.  Next time I'll share with you some of the venues that were at the top of our list and how those stacked up!

What was important to you when searching for a reception space?