We Have a Venue!

Woo!  We have now put down a deposit on this place (the same one that I was talking about before) for March 29!

These pictures are from when my mom went to visit last week.  Very pretty.  Yay!

There was a little bit of drama involving the times - they seemed to say to my mom that the 7 hours we were buying didn't include set-up or clean-up, but then the contract was pretty clear that not only did you have to subtract that time, but that you should only really count on 4 1/2 hours of event time!  That's really not enough for the ceremony AND the reception.  However, since it's a Sunday and we're the only event happening that day, we were able to buy some more hours to make it a more reasonable amount of time.

Also, the kosher caterer that's been recommended to us by many different people on separate occasions is on their list of preferred caterers.  That's great because they know the rules of this place and I'd say we could probably trust them not to do something crazy that would cost us our security deposit.  That's probably the next thing we have to get: the contract with the caterer.  

We have to do it soonish only because we are also going to need them all weekend, not just for Sunday afternoon.  We are planning Shabbat meals for the out of town guests in the hotel who are shomer shabbat and therefore have to come Friday and can't go out to dinner or anything.  So any caterer we get would (preferably) do Friday night dinner, Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner and Sunday dinner.  That's a lot of catering.  However, my thoughts are (at least right now, just preliminary thinking) is that if we are able to block off rooms in a hotel in downtown DC, the Saturday dinner could be relatively small so that the guests would then go out on the town Saturday night... although the kashrut issue might prevent that from actually being possible.  Well, who knows, that's another discussion.

Anyway, phew, another major milestone in the wedding planning process complete!