Picking the Venue

Picking the Venue

April 1st, 2011 @ 11:23 am by Ms. Gazelle
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Confession: Mr. Gazelle and I started scoping out wedding venues before we got engaged. We knew we wanted a summer wedding and that we didn’t want to be engaged for too long. We had to decide on what was important to us for our wedding:

A small, intimate venue that would fit close family and friends—about 60 people
One place where we could have both the ceremony and the reception
A beautiful view
Amazing food

We never talked about getting married in our home city of Calgary, as we both preferred the idea of a destination wedding. Since most of our family would have to travel for the wedding regardless of where it was held, this made sense to us. We decided to search around Vancouver—a beautiful city with amazing views of the water and the mountains. It also happens to be the city where I went to university and a place that we both love to visit together.

One place that kept coming up as a great venue for weddings was the Brock House Restaurant. The Brock House is a beautiful heritage house built in 1912. It is located between Jericho Beach and the Vancouver Yacht Club, right on the water.

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The front of the Brock House

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The stairs that I will come down to walk down the aisle

The Brock House has a gorgeous lawn where the ceremony will take place, and for smaller groups the reception is held on the second level of the house.

The lawn where our ceremony will take place

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Imagine this room with tables and chairs. It will be where our reception will be held.

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Are those Chiavari chairs I spy?

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The room where we’ll have dancing and boogying

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The library—the room where I’ll get ready before the ceremony

Add in the fact that in-house catering takes care of your entire menu and that all of the tables, chairs, and everything else you might need are provided, and we were sold. It seemed like a great option since we would be planning everything from a different city. Seeing the venue on the blogs of so many Vancouver wedding photographers sealed the deal. The place was exquisite. Having a chance to explore the house in person in August reaffirmed our decision. As we strolled along Jericho Beach in front of the house, we kept smiling and saying, “That’s us! That’s where we are getting married!”

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Did you get that “a-ha!” moment, too?

*All personal photos

Tags: vancouver, Venues |

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22 Responses to “Picking the Venue”

1 2 Last

Bee

Miss Candy Apple (message) 1,465 posts, Bumble bee

Cute! It looks lovely. I love that blue fireplace, too

4/1/11 @ 11:28 am (reply)

Bee

Miss Hyena (message) 1,882 posts, Buzzing bee

It looks beautiful!

4/1/11 @ 11:28 am (reply)

Member

sparks (message) 649 posts, Busy bee

I love your venue! Your wedding will look gorgeous there!

4/1/11 @ 11:29 am (reply)

Member

Baileyh (message) 3,491 posts, Sugar bee

I love love love the Brock House, I have gone to many weddings there and they are always so gorgeous!!!

4/1/11 @ 11:36 am (reply)

Member

Miss Smashville (message) 247 posts, Helper bee

We spent 1 day looking at venues (saw 3 total). We are having our ceremony in a historic church (built in 1867) and the reception is at the Dyer Observatory which is out near Radnor Lake so we’ll have beautiful scenery. We both just knew these were the places where we wanted to start our life together.

4/1/11 @ 11:39 am (reply)

Bee

Miss Gazelle (message) 994 posts, Busy bee

@Miss Candy Apple: Yup, I totally love the blue fireplace as well!

4/1/11 @ 11:42 am (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Trail Mix (message) 6,329 posts, Bee Keeper

Beautiful venue!!

4/1/11 @ 11:44 am (reply)

Member

sarahcisme (message) 347 posts, Helper bee

I’m picturing gorgeous getting ready photo ops in the library. Great venue! And I can’t say enough good things about the convenience of in house catering

4/1/11 @ 11:47 am (reply)

Bee

Miss Tartlet (message) 3,207 posts, Sugar bee

Oh my. I love that you’re right on the water, and the house has such lovely details! That crown molding!

4/1/11 @ 11:55 am (reply)

10.

Member

Kcoleybear (message) 683 posts, Busy bee

When my mom and I both saw our reception venue for the first time we knew it was the one.

4/1/11 @ 12:02 pm (reply)

11.

Member

Crown (message) 548 posts, Busy bee

I can SO see you gliding gracefully down those stairs to the awesome ceremony site. LURVE-LY!

4/1/11 @ 12:28 pm (reply)

12.

Member

katiecat (message) 42 posts, Newbee

When I first saw the picture of your venue I did a venue double take. It looks almost exactly like my venue from the outside, except mine’s in Michigan. Needless to say, I love your venue

4/1/11 @ 12:49 pm (reply)

13.

Bee

Miss Cinnamon Bun (message) 1,100 posts, Bumble bee

Gorgeous! And omg getting ready in the library?! You can probably guess how that makes me feel!

We thought briefly about where we should get married, and decided on Calgary, our home because most of our friends are here, and probably wouldn’t be able to afford flying out somewhere.

4/1/11 @ 1:07 pm (reply)

14.

Guest

Whew! I don’t feel so weird now. We are also looking at venues together before officially becoming engaged - my ring is being made as we speak (type).

I know the ladies on Another Site would snark at me for this, but, that’s what we’re doing as the timing for visiting these works out with his day off from work.

Did you feel weird going before becoming engaged? I actually do Not feel weird. I mean, you gotta visit the places eventually…

4/1/11 @ 1:47 pm (reply)

15.

Member

mrsbowieii (message) 693 posts, Busy bee

This place is so amazing… I have slight venue envy. When we went inside our venue and looked at the dance floor and the outside gardens we were hooked.

4/1/11 @ 2:03 pm (reply)

16.

Bee

Miss Gazelle (message) 994 posts, Busy bee

@JB: I didn’t feel that weird either. Mr. Gazelle knew where he wanted to get the ring from and he couldn’t buy it here in Calgary so he had to wait until we visited Vancouver in August. We didn’t want to wait too long to book the venue or our photographer for fear that we wouldn’t be able to get a date where both would match up. So what do you do? At the end of the day you have to do what feels right to you. Yes, we did things a little out of order and slightly unconventionally, but we lucked out and got a venue we loved and an amazing photographer. Better than waiting and scrambling to find things!

4/1/11 @ 2:05 pm (reply)

17.

Guest

@Miss Gazelle: Agreed! Thanks for your response.

Your place looks great!!

4/1/11 @ 2:15 pm (reply)

18.

Member

linguo42 (message) 3,563 posts, Sugar bee

Love Brock House! If we hadn’t been getting married in February, making an outdoor ceremony a really, really bad idea, Brock House definitely would have been on our short list!

The venue we picked was the first one we looked at. When we saw the reception room it was beyond love at first sight. Our wedding planner could tell right away, too. She joked, “Should we even bother looking at the other three on my list?”

4/1/11 @ 2:22 pm (reply)

19.