ideas for a very easy (low stress) wedding (DC venue?)

[Anonymous]

OP, Glen Echo Park is what people are talking about. There's a covered pavilion there for outside events; you can get a band or DJ and have it catered. It can look magical & it's a fun, nice place to have a party (and ceremony). I believe they also have indoor space as well.

[Anonymous]

We had our wedding for 70 people at the Old Town Hall in Fairfax. We had our ceremony upstairs and an afternoon tea reception downstairs. The event space had chairs, tables and a grand piano. We hired a catering company that provided the food, dishes and linens and we had a florist. It was casual and we loved it.

[Anonymous]

Here's the Old Town Hall link

http://www.fairfaxva.gov/parksrec/oldtownhall.asp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also got married at Glen Echo and it was a LOT of fun.

NP here. I did not know this place existed. It looks... AMAZING.

[Anonymous]

This worked great for us.

www.audubonnaturalist.org/index.php/.../woodend-chevy-chase-md

We just picked suppliers from the list they provided of people they work with almost every weekend. It was simple and fun. Costs though.

[Anonymous]

OP, you might try getting a copy out of the library of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Unique-Meeting-Wedding-Greater-Washington/dp/1574271199

They list small venues, e.g., some historic houses, hotels. A lot depends on your budget too, so have a picture in mind of what you want to spend.

[Anonymous]

I did #3. We spent 3 days in NY, got married at city hall, each had one witness (my sister, his best friend) had an insane dinner afterwards. We didn't keep it a secret and some family was a little hurt, but we couldn't afford an easy wedding (i.e. having someone plan it) and didn't have the time to d.i.y.--oh, and I (the bride) always dreamed of eloping.

[Anonymous]

NP here. LOVE the book recommendation.

Its not so special if it is held at a hotel, OP. Sorry to say. Its still a hotel. With the same old hotel food, etc. I've been to all sorts of hotel weddings (including some pretty, some might say, over the top ones at the Mayflower, etc.). While they were nice and all, they were still "hotel weddings". Get my drift?

ITA with the bride and/or grooms favorite restaurant as a pick - lovely idea! GL!

[Anonymous]

When I got married, we rented a small theater, got married on the stage and then we sent the guests to the Great Hall at the Savage Mill in Savage (North Laurel), MD. They had hors d'oevres while we did photos and then we joined them for dinner. The Savage Mill is lovely for those people who want to walk around and see the antique building and look into the now shop windows (the businesses were closed by Saturday evening when we got there). After the reception, for those who wanted to stay later, they could walk to the Ram's Head tavern and several friends from out-of-town did that for a nice way to wind down the evening. Note that since we used Putting on the Ritz catering which is the in-house catering team at Savage Mill, we only had to contact one person to make arrangements for tables, chairs, room setup and catering. That simplified a number of things.

Another friend had a family only ceremony on Friday and on Saturday reserved the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria for the reception. It was not a sit down reception, but was a walk around reception. There were some food stations set up in various places and there were also service staff who took food around on trays and you could just grab fancy hors d'oevures from the servers. There were some small tables and chairs set up throughout the building and people could take food and sit for a while and then get up and mingle more. They had some entertainment including a small quartet, and there was another section where a DJ played some music for dancing. In general, it was a nice mingling party set in a building that had a gallery for people to wander and inspect the art. Because it was designed for mingling, you weren't just stuck with whomever you were seated with. So I got to spend some time with my college friends, then go spend some time with my friend's family (who I hadn't seen in years) and then mix and meet his wife's family, etc. Very nice and different.

The Peabody library in Baltimore is another fascinating space to plan a reception. It's lovely old world architecture and an interesting space.

It's very expensive, but the National Aquarium in Baltimore can be rented for weddings and receptions. You can plan a cocktail reception with light foods and people can tour the aquarium as part of the enticement.

Look at the MNCPPC web-site and you can see many of the historical buildings in Maryland that are available for rentals for events such as receptions. Lovely historical buildings of various sizes. They often have tables and such already available to set up so that you make the arrangements for tables and chairs, etc when you rent the room.

[Anonymous]

OP, I got married at a mansion on a mountain years ago. Details are fuzzy, but I don't think I worried very much about tables, chairs, flowers etc. I think the caterer handled tables, actually... or the event organizer at the mansion. They do these things all the time. If you aren't too picky it won't be a big deal.

[Anonymous]

LOVE the Glen Echo Park idea! We could have gotten married anywhere and if it happened in this area, it would have been there! Fun and memorable (in a good way)!

[Anonymous]

A few ideas for simple decor- first, you can buy candles and votives en masse for cheap at IKEA. Second, you can order large quantities of flowers from Costco- You could order a couple hundred tulips in shades of pink and put them around the room- whatever- but it would be relatively cheap and easy to decorate wherever you decide to have a party/reception.

[Anonymous]

Elizabeth's on L in DC. It's a catering co that bought an event space. They do a lot of corporate events so the customer service is top notch!

[Anonymous]

First you need to price out a venue, cost of rental tables, chairs, linens, catering, everything else and add it all up, then divide by the number of people
. Then price the same thing at a restaurant. We originally put down a deposit for a rental location and then after pricing all the things, cost of tables and chairs, servers, catering, it was so much cheaper to do it in a nice restaurant that we decided to just lose the deposit and go with the restaurant.

[Anonymous]

We had a quick, lovely ceremony in the gardens at the Old Stone House in Georgetown. A violinist played as we walked down the "aisle", and we had around 50 guests in attendance. We had a cocktail-party type reception at a restaurant close by afterwards.