Choosing a place for the reception

Okay, okay, so you might say that we are boring. We didn't go for the marquee or the decorated town hall or any of that, we went for the hotel. We didn't go for a simple buffet, we went for the package deal.

Initially we were determined to be original. My fiance put down his creative foot and said 'no boring old hotel packages, I don't want our wedding to be a choice of wedding 1, 2, or 3. We wanted a beach wedding (too cold!!!), a woodland wedding (again, too wet, cold and Irish weathery), a little hall or a Dublin Squat (but we decided to get married in Donegal). Actually, on that note, we heard of this really cool venue, a squad in Dublin which has been done up really well and now moonlights as a wedding venue. But, as I said, we were heading for Donegal.

But in the end, we opted for a hotel...

Why?

Well, firstly convenience. There is a bit of planning when it comes to weddings and I'm not talking about which kind of design you will have for your personalized menus, I'm talking legal stuff, church stuff, marriage courses, getting photographers, videographers, florists, bakers, invitations, flights, band, dj, wedding list, suits, dresses, etc. So, since we're planning it all from Australia we decided that we wouldn't have the time for anything that required too much extra planning.

The hotel we picked were great! They organize so much, flowers, candles, cake stand and cake preparation, menus, etc.

Secondly, so many of our family and friends are driving long distances to get to the wedding. My fiance's family and friends are coming up from Tipperary which is a nine hour drive. Most of my friends are coming from either Dublin or England. We've even got people flying in from Poland. We are very chuffed that people are making such an effort to make it and we didn't want them to come all that way for finger food.

So, shoot us, we went for the hotel.

Well, picking a hotel is a tough one when you are home for two weeks and you spent the first week sitting at home watching long lost DVDs and getting drunk with your friend Joe. So, there we were one week left in our holiday and time to start hunting for a venue and we didn't even have a list!!!

Why not??

You see we saw this *Great* place on the internet. It seemed to fulfill everything we wanted. It was right beside the church, it was celtic in design, keeping to our 'them' of autumn/celtic Ireland/greens and creams and purples/ancient ringforts/juppies heaven. It seemed, at least if the internet is to be believed, perfect for us. So, we didn't have a backup plan, not really, we were just going to head up to the hotel, keep the appointment that we made a month before and say a big, affirmative yes and have the whole thing wrapped up.

Things didn't really work like that, folks!