Weddingbee Blog

I haven’t talked too much about our venue, apart from how they don’t have any no-throwing-stuff rules, and why we chose the date we did. The truth is, I haven’t talked about it because, well, you can’t have your wedding there. Sorry! It’s like the gorgeous pictures I see online of weddings in people’s backyards, on parents’ farms, or at Grampa’s cottage…It works for that couple, but no one else. I love seeing those photos, even though I could never duplicate the experience, so I decided it was time to share.

This venue idea was actually Cinnamon Buns’s. We were trying to think of places that were secular, pretty, and had natural light. We could probably have had any date we wanted had we decided to get married in the theatre where Cinnamon Buns works full time and I work a lot of the time. There were a couple problems with that, though. Firstly, it would be way too much like being at work. Secondly, theatres are not known for their natural light. Sometimes lobbies have windows, but the theatre itself is almost always sealed off from the light so it doesn’t interfere with the stage lighting. The theatre where Cinnamon Buns works…well, it feels a lot like a cement bunker sometimes, as it is completely underground without a tree or patch of grass in sight when you do come up for air—just sidewalk and office towers.

I was starting to look online at places, when he said, “Hey, what about the opera’s rehearsal hall?” I’m marrying a smarty-pants! We immediately walked over because that particular venue is SO CLOSE to our house! We dropped in uninvited to speak to the production manager, who I know from shows I have rehearsed and run in that space. This was when we learned about the “no weddings” rule. Then we learned about the “friends and family” rule, which is that if we are given the keys on Friday afternoon and no one who comes in to work on Monday can tell that we were there, it’ll be OK.
This is awesome because it gives us the Friday night to decorate! And Saturday morning, I suppose, but that is someone else’s job, not mine!

The building used to be a church, and it was built in the 1910s. It still has a gorgeous brick outside, the stained-glass windows, the organ(!), some of the old woodwork, and funny radiators, too. The best part is that there are separate areas for us to use. We are going to have our ceremony in the part that still looks church-y, with the organ as our backdrop. Beside that hall is the lobby, where we will have all the food and tables set up. Once people have cleared the ceremony space, our DOC will move the chairs, then open up the wall in between the two rooms. They’re separated by a sliding wall! Where we had the ceremony will become the dance floor, and the photobooth will be in there, too. The ceilings are nice and high because the church balcony seating is still in there, and the ceiling height is the same in the two rooms. We took these photos when we walked over to book it:

The ceremony will be where this stage is—not on risers, though.

This is to the left of the organ. The balcony wraps two sides of the room in an L-shape. We’d uncover all the covered windows, too.

It’s a fairly blank slate for us to decorate—there are some things that we won’t be able to take off the walls, like all these opera photos, but I think they will make a fun backdrop for the bar. We don’t want to strip it of its opera-ness because getting married here does help to bring a soupçon of our chosen careers, and it was our work that brought us together.

The “lobby” area. The ceremony area is to the left in this photo.

Sliding wall between the rooms!

We definitely wanted somewhere secular, as neither of us is religious in any way. We’ve got that, as the building was decommissioned as a church awhile ago, but it is fun to have the beauty of the organ and the stained glass still. I also like that is a little bit theatre related, but not overtly. Cinnamon Buns hasn’t worked in that space, and while I have, I haven’t in a couple years, so it isn’t so much like work as some of the theatres in town. They also hold events here fairly regularly, and other companies rent the space to hold fundraisers and such, so they do have a list of preferred caterers, although you don’t have to stick to that. It also means that catering is possible in here!

I love that we can walk to our venue from our house. Is anyone else getting married that close to home?