Edward didn’t ask for much when it came to our wedding, but one
of his requests was that our wedding ceremony take place in a church. Although
we both have Christian upbringings, I was less attached to the idea of having
our ceremony in a church. I mean, pastors travel and Jesus is everywhere. Jesus
put Edward and I together and I knew He (Jesus) would be sure to make it to our
wedding ceremony regardless of where it took place.
One of the things I cared about most in our wedding was
dancing; with Edward, with my friends, by myself. I didn’t care who I was
dancing with, I just knew that I wanted to be on the floor dancing until the
very last song. And if that was the case, we would definitely have to have our wedding
reception at another location, because I wasn’t trying to get struck down for disrespecting
the Lord’s house by gettin’ down in a church.
I definitely thought it was more logical to have our wedding
ceremony and reception at the same location. I tried explaining to Edward that
it would be an inconvenience and also time consuming for the wedding party and
guests to have to travel from one location to another. One of the things I’d
heard a lot from other couples was how fast their wedding day went and I wanted
to enjoy every second of our day without it feeling rushed. I didn’t want to
waste the day dealing with traveling, traffic and being stressed out by time
constraints. I wanted things to be simple and easy for everyone.
We were already on a budget and splitting up the ceremony
and reception locations only added to that budget. We would have to book a
hotel and rent some sort of car service when we could just eliminate those costs
by having the ceremony and reception take place at one location.
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| Image by Danfredo Photos & Film |
I showed Edward a few online photos of Flushing Town Hall,
which is a venue that I’d had my eye on for years. I thought Flushing Town Hall
was great for us because it was affordable, unique and very scenic. Flushing Town Hall had a
few spaces that we could use for different blocks of our day which I thought was
perfect!
My husband is extremely stubborn so he was insistent on us having
our ceremony in a church. Since we began planning our wedding less than a year
to our wedding date, we didn’t really have time to waste going back and forth
with each other when we didn’t yet have a venue booked to be going back and
forth about. We put the location of our wedding ceremony on the back burner for
the moment and made a few appointments to check out some venues.
As I’ve said before, I just don’t have the energy that I
used to have, so I wasn’t interested in traveling back and forth visiting venue
after venue. So like an episode of House Hunters, we made appointments to visit
three venues, all in Queens and we were GOING TO agree on one of them.
Since I’d already had my eye on Flushing Town Hall and it
was close to where we live, it only made sense that it be the first place we visit.
The moment we stepped into Flushing Town Hall the heavens
opened and angels literally began singing; AND playing their harps. The weather
was gorgeous that day, so Edward and I were able to get an accurate vision of what
our wedding would look like if the weather held up.
The venue manager, Kevin, took us on a tour of the garden, the
gallery and the theater which all could be booked for one reasonable price. We
could use the gallery for the cocktail hour and the theater for our reception. We
would have the entire building to ourselves verses having to share the space with
multiple events also taking place on the same day; which would have been fine
with me, but I’m bougie so I preferred the idea of us having the building to
ourselves.
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| Image by Danfredo Photos & Film |
Kevin suggested that we have our ceremony in the garden. The
second I began mentioning to Kevin that Edward wanted to have the ceremony at
his church, Edward interrupted me by stating that it was fine for us to have
our ceremony in the Flushing Town Hall garden. Psssh… Sometimes you have to be
quiet and let people see things for themselves – which is something I’m going
to try and remember in my marriage.
When Edward and I floated out of Flushing Town Hall, we were
on a dreamy high. It was perfect for us! When hunting for anything worthwhile,
you always want to keep your options
open and not commit so quickly to the first thing that comes your way; so even
though we’d already fallen in love with
Flushing Town Hall, we still gave our following
two appointments a chance. Needless to say, we couldn’t get over Flushing Town
Hall and Flushing Town Hall won.
There was a lot of work to be done. Flushing Town Hall would
provide us with the tables and chairs so at least we wouldn’t have to rent them,
but we would have to take care of all of the other details ourselves- decorations,
catering, table settings etc... I’m pretty creative and I had Pinterest on my
side, but the thought of putting my entire wedding together on my own was extremely
overwhelming. I certainly had my work
cut out for me.
How in the world was I going to pull this off?
Up Next: The Wedding Planner
