A visit to the Copperfield Inn

This afternoon, Ryan and I took a trip up to Copperfield to get another look at the ceremony and reception sites, meet with the sales manager, and finalize some plans.  We are a little more than 5 months away from the wedding at this point, and I highly recommend that a couple about to be married make a second visit to their ceremony site at this point in the planning process.  It was a wonderful chance for us to reconfirm that we love the areas we picked, and it put my mind at ease, as well as giving me some additional information which I needed in order to proceed with planning.

We arrived a bit early for our appointment, and since the property where we are holding the ceremony is a park across the street from the inn (called the Kellogg Property), we decided to take a walk over and check out the ceremony site again.  Even though we had to traipse through half a foot of snow to get there, I am glad we did it.  It allowed us to visualize where we want chairs, what direction we want people to face, where my father and I can hide before we are ready to walk down the aisle, and where people can park if they don't want to walk across the street from the inn.  We rented chairs from Bullseye Party Rentals in Glens Falls.  They are going to deliver, set up, and remove the chairs for us on the day of the ceremony.  Today we tried to figure out exactly where we would like the chairs to be placed inside of the pavilion.

Life Lesson #1: If you are going to bring your camera to take pictures of something, make sure you didn't accidentally leave the memory card in your computer at home.  I forgot to put my memory card back in my camera before we left, so I had to use my phone to take pictures today.

After our walk through the snow, we met with the sales manager to talk about some details.  My first goal was to get rid of all the things that had previously been written as "To Be Determined" in our contract.  At this point, I want everything to be set, and I don't want to leave anything up in the air.  This meant that we decided on the time for the cocktail hour and reception, chose the cocktail hour location, and made sure that enough of our guests had booked rooms so that we wouldn't have to pay a fee.  This was all really easy and put me at ease.  Now that we know what time the reception is set to begin, I can order invitations!  The sales manager also talked to us about the location of tables for gifts and place cards, and where we can have the DJ set up.  She showed us some of the items the inn has available to us for use as decorations.  This mostly consisted of hurricane lamps.  They are bigger than the jars I purchased for the terrarium centerpieces, so I don't think I will use them on the main tables, but I might be able to utilize them for the gift and place card tables.

We looked at the linens, talked about the menu, and chit-chatted about how we might want to have the evening run - as far as dances, announcements, etc.  We made sure that the doors to the patio could be opened during the reception - which is not only a beautiful option if the weather is nice, but important for our guests who need to go outside to smoke (yuck).

We will be having the cocktail hour in the front half of what is called the Great Room.  (horrible picture to follow - stupid cell phone...)

And the reception will be held in the back half of the Great Room.  This room has doors that open onto a stone patio, which is very lovely, but it was much too cold to go outside for a look today.  The wall in the middle of the room folds open or closed as needed (and sort of reminds me of the cafe-gym-atorium that we had at my elementary school).

Since we don't have wedding attendants to help us with things, and we won't be having a florist, I had a concern about how to get the tables decorated and when and who would do this.  The sales manager said that two things could be done - either we could set the tables up ourselves the evening before, or we could make a sample table in the morning and the inn staff could then copy what we had done.  Since we are only going to need six tables, we decided that we would be most comfortable setting them up ourselves the night before.  That way we don't have to worry that they are done right and we can set it aside and not have to think about it the next day.

To end our wonderful visit to North Creek, we chose to eat lunch at Trappers Tavern, which is located inside the inn itself.  We have to get photos taken in here by Tiffany before our wedding is over.  This place it so cool!  If it were big enough, we would seriously have the reception right inside the tavern.

Life Lesson #2:  If you think you took a picture on your phone, double check to make sure you actually clicked the button.  I thought I took three or four pictures while we were eating lunch, but I apparently only took one...

We had such a nice time here today, that we decided to come here after our reception is over.  The party could continue all night!

Now on to the next step - choosing the menu... !

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