New Year, New Venue!

OK...I think that the search for a venue is finally over. After having a small crisis of conscience about the cost of the other venue I shared, we decided to keep looking. Well, I did...How was perfectly fine with spending whatever it cost, but he wasn't the one having to not shoe shop for a year! So, the only other option for me really was our local museum. There are not many non-cheesy wedding venues here, so when I say that this was the only other venue I would consider, I really mean it. I am also in the process of joining the Contemporary Art collector's group there and we have many friends that work there, so it seemed like a good place to spend our money. The rental fee is also considered a donation, so we get to write half of it off! Love that!

Here are the few pictures I could actually find on the web, which aren't great. When I go sign the contract next week, I'm planning on taking more and will post when I do. I'm actually more excited about this venue then I was about the last one, because it's broken up into 3 separate spaces, so we'll have a place {the lobby of the museum} for the ceremony, then move outside to the Sculpture Garden for cocktails, then into the cafe {think large white room ripe for decorating} for dinner, then back to the lobby for dancing and dessert. Well, that's my plan as of right now...I've got a little time to tweak it. ;)

Drum roll please...

This is a view into the cafe from the sculpture garden at night. I love the candles in the reflecting pools.

This is the lobby where we'll hold the ceremony. I am in LOVE with this space and I always have been. I've got a little thing for Chihuly glass and the idea of doing the ceremony on the stairs under the flowers makes me VERY happy. 

I'll take a better picture of the steps, but they're big, black and marble...not sure how to handle those yet.

Daytime shot of the rest of the garden. Isn't the design in the pool great? 

Excuse the horribly HUGE display of fruit and cheese {not having that!}, but I posted this to show you the flowers when they were lit. This is also where we're going to do the dance floor and some sort of lounge area. Which I'm hoping they can set up during cocktails and dinner...they're going to hate me for all of these ideas!

This is the white box known as the Museum cafe. It's great because you can basically do anything with it, but it's going to take a large amount of my budget to decorate it, I think. Not sure what I'm going to do, but I'm so happy with the rest of the venue, I really don't care. I do think that we're going to do a buffet/station type dinner, so that will take up more room than just a typical sit-down dinner would, with the tables for people and for food, etc. This way I'll have less floor space to worry about and we can invite more people and make it more of a party atmosphere. 

So, what do you think about the new venue?