Where To Marry Me: The Search

Posted by Tigritza

It's been a couple of weeks since our last post, but rest assured, we've been busy. We've been travelling south every weekend for the last month - April 9/10 was apartment hunting, April 15/16 was wedding venue hunting, April 22/23 was a chill (literally) beach weekend at a friend's place south of Philly, and April 30/May 1 was more wedding venue hunting.

More on the apartment later (yes, we found one!) - this post is about wedding venues. We saw a total of six places, and while that may not seem like a lot, we feel like we've done a pretty exhaustive search! It started with online research, dozens of places. Tasha had to force me to sit down with her and look at scores of photographs of brides and grooms in traditional (boring?) poses in the same color themes, the same choreographed poses and what looked like the same physical setup in each venue. We finally narrowed down the search, and Tasha called each place to make appointments and gauge gay-friendliness (we've heard horror stories of signed contracts being cancelled when the venue hosts realized it was a same-sex couple). I'd been the apartment-hunting appointment-maker, so Tasha took over the wedding-venue-hunting.

Through our search, we realized we were looking for a few things:
- A decent price (prices ranged from $2,600 to $14,000 for 5 hours of wedding time! Ridiculous!)
- Natural light: our original plan had been an outdoor wedding, but given that April weather is so unpredictable, a tented or indoor wedding seems like the only option. Still, the idea of an outdoor space is important to us.
- Fire-friendliness: we want to incorporate some sort of little fire, to address the Hindu tradition
- Gay-friendliness: as I mentioned above
- And finally, Circular-Seating-friendliness!

...That last one is a big one, and rules out many 'standard' wedding venue setups. One evening in England last month, at a bar by the river in Bristol, as we pondered questions like "who walks down the aisle first?" we suddenly realized: why is there only one aisle? And why are we getting married at the front of the room? Why can't there be two aisles, leading to the center of the room, with the guests seated in a circular fashion around the chuppah? (Yes, we will also have some sort of indian-ized colorful huppah) As soon as that circular idea was born, all kinds of images started coming into our minds - everything started falling in place, at least in our heads. We saw the setup, the colors, the ceremony, the fabric... Tasha became crazy-excited that I was getting excited, and we had too many glasses of wine and breathed a sigh of relief. It felt good to finally know, even in the slightest, what we wanted.

So - what venues? Of the four we rejected, some were hit-or-miss and some were absolute-miss, but we finally settled on two we loved:

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First, the first venue we saw! In Olde City Philadelphia (gorgeous area, with cobblestone and old buildings all around), was this venue:

(Note: all images from here and here)

The space is an art gallery, and is composed of two levels. The bottom level is where the ceremony, cocktails and post-dinner dancing will be held. Our favorite thing about this space is that with the amount of light streaming through the windows and the incredible talent of the staff, it can be utterly transformed into anything! We saw pictures of Hindu ceremonies, Jewish ceremonies, Christian ceremonies, social events, benefits, and more. Here are some images -

The venue has worked with all kinds of Ceremonies -

The same downstairs space can be completely transformed for Post-Dinner Dancing .
The images below may not be from weddings, but they give you an idea...

As you can see, the upstairs floor directly overlooks the lower floor through this sort of circular balcony in the middle, making everything a lot more intimate and unified. Dinner will be held upstairs -

We LOVE that it's naturally circular. That it's intimate, and that no one section is closed off. That it's full of light (the upper floor actually has an entire wall of windows). And most importantly, we love the staff! We know they could create an incredible wedding for us.

BUT, one downside is that it's an art gallery:

So, we have no control over what exhibit is up. We've been told we can take down 2-3 pieces if we find them offensive or awkward, but we can't take down an entire exhibit. Our hope is that in photos and in the hype of the whole party, the art pieces will sort of blend into the background...

Also, there are still some kinks to be worked out - for example, since dinner and post-dinner dancing are on different floors, we need to be sure that we set up tables on the lower floor so some guests can sit if they don't feel like dancing. The worst case scenario would be a split, where half the guests stay upstairs and only half come down and dance.

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The second finalist here is... *drumroll* ...the Franklin Institute!

(Note: all images from here and here)

For those of you unfamiliar with Philly, the Franklin Institute is a science museum in a really old building. So, it has lots of really beautiful and really science-y rooms to choose from!

There are two good possibilities for the Ceremony location: one is the roof (but again, since April weather is so unpredictable, this may not be a good idea)

But the other, more interesting choice is... the Planetarium!! Yes, believe it or not, they hold ceremonies here. The planetarium screens are in the form of a giant demi-sphere, and are entirely customizable, so we could choose an amber starfield, a full moon, or even a slow rising and setting sun for the duration of the ceremony - any colors, any images... and some of the pictures we saw on the tour (which unfortunately I don't have here) are beautiful! Plus, the planetarium is definitely circular!

As cool as a Planetarium wedding sounds (and believe me, I'm crazy about astronomy so that sounds super cool to me), our main worry is darkness and the enclosed space. The ceremony is supposed to be beautiful and free in our minds, and trapping it in a dark planetarium just doesn't seem right. Even if we choose a sunrise/sunset... it just seems too... artificially bright, you know? What do you guys think?

Cocktails would be in one of the science display rooms - a very fun and classier one is the Electricity room, where all the displays are interactive and could make for a very fun, non-awkward, sparkly cocktail hour (definitely tops the other venue in this respect...)

...And then dinner and dancing (both in the same room! solves the previous venue's problem, yay!) would be in Franklin Hall - a majestic space with a giant statue of Ben Franklin! It has a huge dome, with incredible light and sound displays. The hall can be absolutely transformed into any color - starry or cloudy skies, amber or red or green or orange or blue lighting, whatever - imagine, for example, the lighting changing to starry blue skies for the first dance, and then back to amber for the party. We were blown away by the display.

The biggest problem with this venue is that there are so many different rooms! It is a huge museum, and guests would have to be herded from room to room - hopefully without losing a grandmother or a 4-yr-old taking a wrong turn down some random corridor. It feels less intimate...and again, we're torn in two directions about the coolness-but-darkness of the planetarium ceremony. It is a huge space though, and the lighting is incredible.

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So there you have it. Our top two candidates. Which would you choose?
(Note: Price is pretty much the same for both venues.)