Weddingbee

[ Part 1 ]

After struggling with the logistics of getting married inside Glacier National Park, we gave up on dealing with the Park Service and moved to looking at venues just outside the West entrance.

I discovered the first option on our wedding coordinator’s website. Before we hired Katalin to do our long-distance dirty work, I looked through her online “portfolio” and was pleasantly surprised to see that even though she is located in Bozeman, she had planned a Glacier wedding in 2006. Their venue, Great Northern looked beautiful in photos and Katalin spoke highly of it.

The Great Northern is actually a rafting shop with a set of cabins and a large piece of property used for outdoor weddings and receptions. We had driven past it many times on our way to and from the park, and it was less than two miles from the West entrance.

They gave us a tour of the grounds, which I thought were beautiful, if slightly hard to access. The site has a really neat two-tiered layout: there is a small, flat area for a ceremony that overlooks the mountains. On the lower tier, accessible by a gently sloping pathway, is a slightly larger grass area for a tented or open-air reception.

There were a few things that prevented us from choosing this site. First, it was slightly too small for our needs and my overall sense was that if we had our wedding there, things would be too crammed together. The scenery was lovely, but the size took away from the “wide open” feeling that we were craving. I also didn’t like that the approach to the pretty site was less-than attractive.

The biggest problem was that the site, though set back in trees, is still close to four-lane Highway 2 and suffers from a LOT of traffic noise. There seemed to be noisy semi-trucks passing every few minutes. So before we even talked about pricing, this venue was out.

Our next stop was the historic Belton Chalet, also just outside the West entrance of the park.

The chalet is a beautiful old building with gorgeous rooms and a vintage dining room. There is an adjoining taproom and restaurant that serves marvelous food and provides mouth-watering catering.

The Belton Chalet advertises three spaces available for events, the Chalet Dining Room, the Terrace Room and Veranda, and the Meadow and Grounds. Unfortunately, all of the spaces were too small to accommodate our projected 100 guests, except the mysterious “outdoor tented space” and the people we talked to didn’t know anything about that. They couldn’t even show us the meadow.

The atmosphere, overall, was gorgeous and historic, though quite possibly a little too stuffy and not rustic enough for my tastes. It didn’t seem like a wedding at the Belton Chalet would work for us, but after the tour I would definitely recommend it for lodging and dining. I made a mental bookmark about the wonderful restaurant and taproom as a potential location to hold our rehearsal dinner.

We then hopped in the car and drove half an hour to the East to visit our final destination for the day, the Isaak Walton Inn.

The day was starting to get gloomy and I was feeling pretty dejected about finding a venue that would work for us. The Isaak Walton Inn seemed too far to even consider a realistic option, so I was ready to turn around when we got there and start from scratch.

Surprise of surprises, I was seriously impressed!

The Isaak Walton Inn is located in Essex, MT, a small town about halfway between West Glacier and East Glacier. Essex exists as a freight yard and is also a flag stop for the Amtrak Empire Builder, which runs West to Seattle and East to Chicago. The platform is owned by the Isaak Walton Inn and, as you can imagine, the Inn is a train lover’s dream.

When we found the Inn, I immediately loved the location and the ambiance. The building is gorgeous and feels remote without being inaccessible. The whole place has wonderful and authentic train theme, which it somehow pulls off without tackiness. The outside of the lodge, the lobby, the dining room, the bar, and the bedrooms are all outfitted with Great Northern Railroad paraphernalia.

The manager was very helpful and explained to us that most weddings were held in an outside pavilion, which is then converted for dining and dancing. The Inn provides all the catering, with the exception of the wedding cake, and also supplies beverages and bartenders– either in the pavilion or the basement bar. They also offer a discount to guests who rent the entire inn, which includes the four converted caboose suites.

I was also pleasantly surprised by their rates. Not only do they do it all, they do it at a low, low price.

The downside was that for our guests, a wedding at the Isaak Walton Inn meant farther travel time. And the Inn wasn’t large enough for everyone to get a room even if we rented the whole building, so that would also mean splitting lodging. On the upside, guests arriving by train could step off at the doorstep of their hotel. How cool is that!

In addition, because the Isaak Walton Inn is directly between East and West Glacier and on the Amtrak line, it’s serviced by the Park’s free hiker shuttles as a courtesy to guests.

I felt that a wedding at the Isaak Walton Inn would offer guests a genuine Montana experience, without limiting their exposure to the park. I loved the railroad theme and the facility– they certainly make simple and affordable to get married there! All in all, I think it’s an amazing venue and they offer a great wedding package… but I didn’t want a pre-packaged wedding.

I craved a venue where I could personalize all the details and really put our Montana wedding coordinator to WORK!

Despite deciding the the Isaak Walton Inn wasn’t for us, we left feeling that we at least had a solid option to fall back on.

In the end, it was a good thing we didn’t settle on a venue too quickly, because we were about to head in another direction entirely!

Did any one else have to search far and wide before you realized that the perfect venue was right in front of you?