Weeks 49 & 50: Venues & Pizza

I mentioned in a July post that my son got engaged to his girlfriend. They had postponed setting a date until after they took a trip to her native country so that he could meet her parents and attend a wedding banquet there with family and friends. Upon returning to the States in November, they announced that they were just going to have a civil ceremony by year's end. That is this coming weekend. My husband and I insisted that we wanted to have a reception for them next summer, but the task of finding a reception venue for the American family and friends has fallen on my shoulders because 1) they live a few hours away and we decided it was best to have the reception here, 2) English is her second language and we've found that a lot gets lost in translation for her, and 3) she has never been to a wedding reception here and my son has been to a whopping ONE (his oldest sister's). In other words, it's the blind leading the blind.

My oldest daughter chose the first venue she looked at, so my husband and I just showed up and wrote a check. Therefore, I'm calling venue shopping my new thing for Week 49. It's been a real eye-opener dealing with most of these places. I'm finding that is generally true with the service industry as a whole. Phone calls and e-mails are not returned. Online pricing is outdated and photos lie.

I had an appointment to see a ballroom at a hotel on Monday at 9:30 a.m. I parked and checked my phone before heading inside, only to find an e-mail from the wedding coordinator attempting to change the time. I replied that I was in the parking lot and heading inside. She seemed quite flustered and told me she would have to talk fast. How's that for a welcome?

This was the 'ballroom.' In actuality, it was 1/4 of the ballroom, which is what they claimed would hold 75 guests, a buffet, and a dance floor. I'm sure it looks nicer when it's set up, but it was a hard no for me. Another nearby hotel gave me headaches with playing phone tag and the coordinator had problems sending me an e-mail (even though she and I read my address over and over again on the phone). Her idea of a meeting was for me to just stop by. I decided to pass when I couldn't find a parking spot in the middle of the day. I scheduled the rest of the appointments for when the bride and groom were in town for Thanksgiving.

This was the second floor of a nice restaurant. We liked it, but it was pricey and we would have had to rent a dance floor and pay someone to set it up, which just seemed like a big extra expense. Also, I thought the valet parking would be a nuisance for guests. Another place we checked out was an event center. We showed up at 10 am Friday morning for our appointment, only to find all the doors locked. As we were driving away, we see someone waving to us from inside the door. It was a woman, even though we were supposed to be meeting with a man (who told me on the phone that his name was 'K,' which was also weird). We get out and she never mentions where K was, just hurries us to see the freezing cold event room. I swear, the space was the size of our family room. How they could cram 75 people into that space is beyond me.

Guess what? We ended up settling on the same place my daughter had her reception. It's a different room than she had for her 200 guests, but I thought it was really spacious and the view of the lake can't be beat. My son and his fiancée hem-hawed around a bit and lost their first choice of dates, but the papers are signed and it's off my list of worries for now!

Week 49 new thing was a 'gourmet' pizza place we visited with two other couples. We waited for a table and this is where they seated the six of us:

How dumb is this table? That miniature table on top is not removeable. There was no way to have a conversation with anyone across from you. We asked to be moved and waited again. My pizza was not that great, either. I ordered Kalamata olive and portobello mushroom and the mushrooms looked like plain old white button mushrooms to me. I'm probably alone, but wood fire pizzas are not my thing. They taste burnt to me. I did have a really good local beer that I'd not heard of before: Lock 15 Strawberry Rhubarb Wheat. It was delicious!