Weddingbee Blog

(Photo Credit)

So after writing all about our reception location drama, you might be wondering where our oh-so-special ceremony site is and why we didn’t just opt to have both the ceremony and the reception at our gorgeous loft. Well, there’s a very good rationale behind that: we’re pretty much in love with the idea of our ceremony site, which just so happens to be a THEATER! I mean, does it get more perfect for us than that?

A lot of people have given me strange looks when I tell them that we’re getting married in a theater, but everyone who knows us immediately nods and says, “How perfect for you guys!” We have a couple of reasons behind our decision to A) not have the ceremony in a church and, B) not have it at the loft.

• For one, both Dan and I were theatre majors in college, which is how we met. We’ve both grown up on stage and I know that I feel most comfortable and right in the world when I’m on a stage performing. So where better to have such a momentous occasion in our lives take place?
• We also picked a theater because neither of us are religious, and luckily for us, all of our parents are totally cool with us wanting to make our wedding about us and our marriage, as opposed to about our or anyone else’s religious beliefs. Theaters originally started out as places of spirituality in Ancient Greece, and we feel similarly about their importance today, so it’s perfect!
• Also, how many places can you think of where there are already seats that don’t need to be rented, set up, or taken down? There’s even an aisle down the middle already!

There was only one trouble: I had a terrible time finding a small theater that would allow us to rent the space for just one night! Most theaters want to rent the place out by the week, which makes sense if you’re staging a production and need the rehearsal and tech time, but our budget just didn’t allow for that luxury. Even the theaters that did allow one night rentals didn’t want to rent to us on a Saturday night, because that would make it really difficult for them to rent the rest of the weekend out, which I understand. So we finally made the tough call to have the wedding on a Sunday night, thereby being able to work around the theater’s Sunday matinee. We chose Columbus Day weekend, since my dad and step mom got married on the Sunday night of that weekend last year, and it didn’t seem to bother their guests. Let’s just hope we have the same luck!

I searched long and hard for a theater that was the right size and within walking distance of The Soho Loft, our original reception location before all the drama went down with that. I finally found exactly what we were looking for in The Kraine Theatre, pictured above. It’s a converted brownstone in the East Village that seats 99 and was willing to let us have Sunday night for just a couple hundred dollars!

Things were going perfectly… until our reception location fell through. But don’t worry, there’s a happy ending ahead!

What wedding scares have you had?