Real Weddings: Choosing a venue and a date

Our first wedding planning task was to find a location for our wedding. We weren't planning a church ceremony, and both agreed we liked the idea of holding the ceremony and reception at the same place. We also looked mostly north of Pittsburgh, since that's where we live.

Some of the place we looked at online:

• The Grand Ballroom at Cornerstone Commons, Butler
• Succop Conservancy, Butler
• Cranberry Highlands, Cranberry Township
• Armstrong Farms, Saxonburg
• The Atrium, Prospect

By looking online and contacting these sites for some more information, we narrowed our choice down to two: The Grand Ballroom and The Atrium. After visits to both, we selected The Atrium.
What we loved about The Atrium was the light, open feel of the whole place. It felt perfect for a summer wedding. Also, David very much liked the idea of an outdoor wedding, but the thought of weather issues scared me. At The Atrium, they offer an indoor greenhouse for ceremonies, as well as an outdoor gazebo. We didn't need to decide until the day of the event which option we would use.

I also loved The Atrium's packages, because they were so affordable and included a lot of things we would have had to pay for elsewhere, like centerpieces. At the same time, there was a good amount of flexibility for things like menu choices.

Now that we had our location, we needed a date. We had decided on a late summer wedding, because I wanted about a year to plan and because all of our brothers were in school out of town. At the time, all of the August dates were already booked but one--and it was on hold. We picked the last weekend in July as a back up, and waited another week before we got the call that August 11 was free. . .and our wedding officially had a date.