When my fiance and I started investigating potential wedding venues, we weren’t really sure what we were looking for.  We knew that we wanted something more unique and less sterile than most hotels and banquet halls, but once we had eliminated the Park West and Garfield Park Conservatory, our venue hunt was stalled because we ran out of ideas.  We did realize that we wanted a venue where we could hold both the ceremony and reception though – we’ve been to too many weddings where the guests had to kill a couple of hours between the ceremony and reception, and that’s just no fun.  (Well, sometimes we’ve gotten rollicking drunk in those few hours, so fun has definitely been had during that interval, but we would have preferred to celebrate with the rest of the wedding guests immediately!  Plus, as the bride, I wouldn’t be too amused to see my friends stumbling into the reception because we’d given them too much time to drink on their own after the ceremony.)  So, back to the internet I went for a second round of research!  

The Knot was actually quite useful as a springboard for venue research – if nothing else, it was instructive to see that when I tried to search for Chicago venues in the “one dollar sign” price range, I found nothing. And there wasn’t a whole lot in the “two dollar sign” price range either.  Note to self:  Planning a wedding in Chicago is expensive.  (Duh, Sarah!) 

One of the most unique places I discovered was Catalyst Ranch, in Chicago’s West Loop.  It’s technically a meeting conference center, but as they say on their website, it’s definitely “the funkiest conference center you’ve ever seen.”  Catalyst Ranch is full of vintage furniture in bright colors, neat oriental rugs, and retro art and collectibles, including a collection of vintage hats and wigs!  

Their rooms are named after dances – Polka, Tango, Cha Cha, Mambo, Jitterbug – how cute is that?!  We had to check it out.  I showed up at the end of a long day at work, and was immediately endeared to the place by the fact that their staff directed me to a refrigerator full of complimentary soft drinks.  Hey, it’s the little things.  I loved the general look and feel of the place, and they have thrown some cool weddings there in the past...but on the one hand, it was hard for us to imagine our wedding there, especially the ceremony, which we felt should happen in a place with a certain solemnity, despite the fact that we aren’t having a church wedding.  On the other hand, it almost seemed like too obvious of a choice for us – like being the casual, quirky people we are, of course we would choose the funky venue that most of our older relatives probably wouldn’t appreciate.  We didn’t particularly care what those relatives thought, but we certainly didn’t want to be predictable.  So in the end, we moved on, although I will jump at any excuse I might find in the future to have a party at Catalyst Ranch!

The last two venues we visited became our finalists.  The Grand Piazza, aka the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame in Little Italy, was a fabulous surprise.  I was immediately drawn to it when I saw this picture:

What Chicago bride wouldn’t want that spectacular skyline view in her wedding photos?  We wanted somehow to incorporate the city into our wedding anyway, and a rooftop ceremony with a view of the skyline seemed like a great way to do it!  We visited the Grand Piazza in December, after the weather had gotten pretty chilly, but we were still impressed with the view from the rooftop.  We also loved the people who gave us the tour – Danielle from the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame, and Becky from Levy Events.  They wee young and energetic, but also knowledgeable and professional.  It was the first time that we sort of “clicked” with venue staff, and we were confident that they would do an excellent job helping to plan our wedding.  

Before we even went in, my fiance was struck by the statue of Joe DiMaggio across the street:

“How cool would it be to have some wedding pictures in front of this statue?”  Hmm, maybe for you and the groomsmen, honey – I actually love baseball, but I didn’t see myself hanging with Joltin’ Joe before the wedding.

The venue has three floors, plus the rooftop terrace, and each floor is rented separately.  The ground level is the exhibit gallery, full of lots of interesting paraphernalia from Italian-American sports heroes, and they offer the option of making your own “exhibits” in their cases for your wedding. The second floor or “Sports Room” contains more sports paraphernalia; the third floor is a great ballroom with a built-in dance floor and AV capabilities – they had a table set as it would be for the wedding, which I thought was a nice touch for our first tour – and of course the fourth floor is the rooftop terrace. 

First floor gallery:

Third floor ballroom:

We figured that we would want at least two floors – the terrace for the ceremony, and the ballroom for the reception.  However, the rooftop didn’t really offer a backup plan in case of inclement weather, which made me a little nervous.

Around the same time, we visited the Newberry Library.  Despite the fact that I’ve always been an avid reader, I had only been to the Newberry once during my nine years living in Chicago, and that was for a work-related charity Christmas sale.  I really didn’t even remember that when I visited with my fiance, so it felt like the first time I had seen this place:

I was immediately impressed by the exterior of the building, and the grand marble staircase coming down into the lobby when we walked in!  This would be the "aisle" I would walk down to the ceremony:

Pictures courtesy of the Newberry Library.  None of these shots truly captures the grandeur of the staircase, but at least you get an idea.

We met with Karen Skubish, who has been working in their Special Events department forever.  It was funny, because we had discussed the fact that we liked the young staff at Grand Piazza because they weren’t jaded from working a million weddings – and then we met Karen, who has worked a million weddings but still seems enchanted by her work. 

The Newberry Library was founded in 1887, and it houses a fascinating collection of old books, manuscripts and maps related to the history and culture of Western Europe and America.  I’ve never browsed the collection, which includes illuminated medieval manuscripts, historical sheet music, and the personal papers of Midwest literary figures and Chicago politicians, among other things.  I did become more interested in the Newberry when I read The Time Traveler’s Wife – one of my favorite books of the past few years – because one of the main characters works at the library.

Karen showed us around while describing the décor that they usually provide for weddings and the function of the different spaces.  She painted a beautiful picture of a tasteful, romantic wedding that we could easily personalize.  The ceremony is often held on the stairs, and I just love the idea of coming down a grand staircase instead of walking down an aisle!  And then the guests move down a hall to Ruggles Hall for the reception.  Ruggles Hall is beautiful.  Wood paneled floors, lovely chandeliers, nice opera chairs, and tall windows along two sides of the room, one side looking over the park in front of the library. Here are a couple of photos of Ruggles set up for weddings:

 by Tricia Koning Photography

by Peter Thurin Photography

And here are a few pictures of the park in from our return visit with my future in-laws this weekend - we can only hope it looks close to this beautiful in April!

We were attracted to the Grand Piazza and the Newberry for different reasons, but once we had seen those venues, we knew that we would be happy having our wedding at either one, and it just became a matter of comparing value for money.  The Newberry rental fee included some nice amenities, like a private parking lot, security, and some décor, including lots of votive candles for every nook and cranny, and a garland for the banister.  All of those things would cost extra at Grand Piazza, making the total venue rental expense fairly comparable.   

I had no idea when we started looking at venues that we needed to be thinking about caterers at the same time, but our final decision pretty much revolved around the catering situation.  At the Newberry, we had a choice of any caterer, and even the option to bring in our own alcohol.  On the other hand, Grand Piazza is exclusively catered Levy Events.  Although I’ve read good things about Levy, and I absolutely adore Spiaggia, which is a Levy restaurant, we weren’t that excited about their event menus.  Well, we weren’t impressed by the selection of appetizers – we thought their chef stations looked awesome, but we quickly learned that buffets and/or stations can quickly add up to cost more than a plated dinner.  Who knew?  It made sense after it was explained that the caterer has to provide more food at stations or a buffet, but we just had this idea that buffets must be cheaper – one of the many misconceptions shattered in my first few months of researching the details of planning a wedding in Chicago. 

So the Newberry definitely had the catering advantage, and a few other nice features – by its very nature, the Newberry would require less additional décor than Grand Piazza, and the location was more central.  Finally, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if we planned an outdoor ceremony I would be anxious about the weather up until the wedding day.  So we’ll be inside at the Newberry, but as I mentioned, there’s a nice park out front, so I hope to have some wedding pictures with trees in them! 

So finally, almost six months after our engagement, the first crucial decisions were made: our wedding would be on April 26, 2008, at the Newberry Library.  Hooray for decisions!

I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where I'll be . . . where I'll be

Talking Heads, "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)"

My fiance and I got engaged at the end of August, 2006 (I can't believe it's been almost a year!), and we didn’t rush to start making any wedding plans, because we knew we would have a longer engagement than most. I’ve seen a couple of former coworkers planning weddings in less than a year, and it seemed really stressful to me. Plus, we are taking on much of the wedding expenses ourselves, and we needed some time to save! 

However, once we were engaged, I found that I couldn’t help thinking about the wedding. I was pretty sure that I wanted a spring wedding, and once we realized our April 26 anniversary fell on a Saturday in 2008, that became our tentative date. About six weeks after our engagement, we drafted wedding invitation list to see what size wedding we were talking about – we had guessed around 200, and we were amazed when the first draft of our Excel invitation spreadsheet turned out to be right around that number. Armed with this information, we started thinking about potential venues.

Despite the higher cost implications, we knew that we wanted our wedding to be in the city of Chicago. Both of us are very attached to the city, and we’ve been living here for many years. We’ve also been to a few downtown weddings that we loved – it’s just so cool to see the city from a terrace, through a window or even when you step outside for a breath of fresh air. That said, our first thought as huge fans of live music was one of our favorite venues, the Park West in Lincoln Park. The Park West is a beautiful historic theatre, built in the 1920s, and we’ve seen quite a few concerts there over the years. We loved the idea of having our wedding at one of our favorite concert venues, and we were attracted to the built-in audio-visual capabilities, since we knew that we wanted to do the wedding music ourselves if we could. The few pictures I found online make it look like they can do almost anything with the space:

Love the candlelit tables...

Hmm, not sure what sort of events would inspire the decor in that picture...

We met with their special events person, who we liked, and we thought about it a lot, but it was out of our original price range, and in the end we found other places that we liked more and offered better value for their rental fee.

In the beginning, I was highly enamored with the idea of an outdoor wedding – maybe it’s the hippie girl in me, but I loved the idea of being surrounded by the natural beauty of trees and flowers, and after all, part of the reason I wanted a spring wedding was the warmer weather and newly-blooming flowers. I had heard that the Chicago Park District rented their spaces at a relatively low cost, so I investigated their website and set off to check out a few of the spaces. We were firmly in the midst of autumn at that point, so I knew I wasn’t experiencing the gardens in their full glory, but I felt that I could still get some impression of the available spaces. 

Buckingham Fountain is fabulous...

And it looks awesome at night...

...but in my opinion, it's too much of an obvious choice for a Chicago wedding, and its central Grant Park location doesn’t offer much privacy from roaming tourists. It was also the most expensive of the Park District facilities to rent, and it appears that it’s become much more expensive since I first investigated – it’s now a whopping $30,000 just to rent the space!

I really liked the Lincoln Park Conservatory gardens though. I could see myself walking down the natural “aisle” between the large flowerbeds, and I could see us being married in front of the lovely fountain in the center of the garden.

But where would we have our reception? We weren’t sure it would be warm enough at the end of April for an outdoor reception – you just never know in Chicago – and we didn’t really like the idea of renting a tent and all of the necessary accoutrements anyway. The conservatory itself is very pretty inside...

...but there certainly isn’t a large enough open space for a reception. And anyway, where would people park? We'd almost definitely have to do valet.

The place I liked best was the Garfield Park Conservatory. I had only been to the conservatory once before I went to investigate it as a potential wedding venue, when they had a spectacular Chihuly exhibit several years ago... 

...and when I went back after our engagement, I was delighted to re-discover what I consider a real treasure. I love living in the big city, but sometimes I miss the more natural rural surroundings of my childhood, and I think it’s nice to have a place to immerse oneself in the natural beauty of plants and flowers. I find it both calming and rejuvenating...kind of like yoga that way. Anyway, your first steps into the Conservatory reveal the Palm House, an “idealized tropical landscape” of, well, lots of tall palm trees soaring up to a high glass ceiling, interspersed with lots of exotic tropical plants I didn’t recognize.

The Garfield Park Conservatory is much larger than its Lincoln Park cousin, and along with several display houses – the Palm House, the Aroid House, the Desert House, and the Fern Room, which fascinates me because it’s planted to show what Illinois might have looked like millions of years ago, and when I was in the edge of the indoor lagoon with nobody else in sight I almost felt like I had gone back in time.

It also has a perfect room for events, Horticulture Hall. Look how pretty!

And it has an outdoor patio surrounded by more gardens, which I thought could be a neat place for a ceremony. Unfortunately, my fiance wasn’t quite as excited about this place as I was – I think he appreciates flowers more than some guys, but he still wasn’t that excited about getting married at the Conservatory, although you could rent the entire space for $3,000! Honestly, it is a bit out of the way, and the surrounding neighborhood isn’t the greatest either. On top of that, it turned out that they already had something scheduled for April 26, and by the time we learned that, we had come across a couple of new places that we liked better, so we stopped considering it as a potential wedding venue.

Stay tuned for the second and final chapter in our wedding venue search, as we narrow it down to our two finalists…

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place

Talking Heads, "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)"