Whew. You may have noticed a few things changed on here....most obvious? The date and location of our wedding. Old plan? Semiahmoo Hotel on August 10th 2013. New plan? Port Gamble on August 31st 2013. Here's the story.
On Wednesday afternoon, our photographer emailed me and said "I'm sorry sorry to hear about Semiahmoo closing, let me know how I can help". Oh. My. God. My heartbeat sped up. I googled 'Semiahmoo hotel' and sure enough, a Seattle Times article, posted an hour earlier, pops up with the announcement earlier that day that the hotel will be closing in December 2012. But our wedding is 8 months after that! Holy mackerel. I burst into tears. I called Dan. Though I could hear the panic in his voice, he told me to calm down, to get in my car and drive towards home (I work an hour south of the city), pick him up, and that we would 'go home, eat delicious food and sort it out'. I did just that, and sure enough, we worked it out. We made a list of all of our favorite venues from our original search. We added a few new ones. We ranked them high, medium and low priority. At 8 am the next morning, we called them all, in rank order. Our #1 choice? The church and pavilion in Port Gamble. We struck out on almost every call, except the first one. They had ONE Saturday left and it was ours if we wanted it. We quickly checked the date with family, groomsmen and bridesmaids and by the end of the day we had signed a contract and paid the deposit. Cherry on top? Our incredible photographer hadn't booked that day yet, so she's still able to do our wedding! Hallelujah.
We couldn't be happier. We had loved Port Gamble in the first venue search, but were en route to Semiahmoo the day we checked it out and since Semiahmoo was beautiful and already in the works, we booked it. Though we were excited about Semiahmoo, we're ecstatic about Port Gamble. It just feels right - it's much more 'us'. One of our original goals was that we wanted our guests to have to take a ferry to get to our wedding, since the ferry ride across Puget Sound is one of the most beautiful things you can do in Seattle. Semiahmoo was on the water, so it worked for us, but our new spot is on the Kitsap Peninsula, which means...you guessed it....a ferry across the Sound!
Another great thing about Port Gamble? It was built by two men from Maine, so it looks like home. I knew my dream of getting married in Maine was always a bit impractical, but this is the next best thing! And now we get to have our ceremony in the most beautiful church - it is simple yet classic, and we get to ring the bell once we're married.
So that's our tale. What seemed like our biggest nightmare (in the midst of those first tears, I said to my coworker 'my wedding is cancelled!') turned into a reset on our wedding planning - it allowed us to take into account all we've come to hope for in our wedding, and now we feel so lucky that we've ended up with a result more like us than what we started with. We can't wait for our friends and family to come and help us celebrate! See you all on Labor Day weekend 2013!
No comments:
Post a Comment