The sacrament of marriage is a sacred thing, not just among those of the Christian faith, but other religions as well. But although each country has a different way of celebrating marriage, weddings are and will remain a very important part of their culture. Needless to say, couples consider their wedding to be a momentous occasion and will go to lengths to ensure that they can have the best possible wedding. Choosing the right reception venue will do a lot to ensure a wonderful wedding celebration.

Here is a short guide to help you find the perfect venue for you to celebrate your wedding.

Before anything else, you and your partner should determine (by yourselves, or with the help of a professional Nashville wedding planner), what you really want for your special day. Finding a concept to work with should take into consideration the needs of the bride and the groom, despite the fact that it’s usually the bride who becomes heaving involved in the planning of the wedding.

Secondly, you should make sure that the venue is available, and accessible to you and your guests. Some of the best wedding sites like Historic Cedarwood, Riverwood Mansion and Springhaven Mansion book up fast…so you need to do your planning early.

Your Nashville wedding reception should take place in a location where your guests can relax and have fun in a private setting. Keep in mind that in most cases a wedding is the first step to creating the most important institution in society: the family. With that said, your wedding reception should be a private affair, unless of course the bride or groom is famous, either as a public figure or a celebrity. If there are too many uninvited people walking around, the integrity of the solemn affair may be compromised.

The third thing that you and your partner should think about doing is creating a backup plan. Accidents happen, and this goes two-fold for couples who choose to have an outdoor wedding in Nashville. A backup plan is necessary in case they do. For example, if you’re having a garden wedding at Centennial Park for instance and it rains, you should have an alternative venue nearby.

Nature can sometimes disrupt the festivities, as in the case of destination weddings where the guests need to ride a boat to the tropical island location. In case the boat breaks down or it rains too heavily to set out for the island, an alternative venue should be ready. This will ensure that the wedding will push through, and the guests won’t have to suffer the inconvenience of extending their stay or taking another day off work just to attend a wedding that’s been rescheduled for another day.

Wedding Venues in Nashville

The world we live in is a world of deadlines, tiny budgets, and stuck-up hotel event managers that can’t wrap their heads around the fact that you can’t have your wedding on the first Saturday in June because Aunt Agnes has an appointment with her Chiropodist on that day, and that’s the only day that her sloth of a son can take her there and that’s why you need to move the wedding date to the second Saturday. The world is indeed flawed.

Anyhow, just because you have a budget you need to stick to doesn’t mean that you can’t have a lovely wedding. A wedding that didn’t cost a fortune to put on doesn’t have to be a cheap wedding. Just because money is a little tight doesn’t mean you can’t have a wonderful day.

Before anything else, you need to talk to yourself and your spouse to determine how much you can afford to spend for the wedding. Try to keep your head when negotiating. Is it absolutely necessary to get Victorian silver centrepieces, or will a pretty vase do just as well? Would you rather spend your savings on a lavish party or an exotic and expensive honeymoon, or would you rather be able to make a down payment on a house? Consider your options carefully, determine how much you’re willing to spend, and keep that amount in mind when making decisions about the wedding.

The second thing we need to look into is the guest list. If you know how many people are going to be attending, then you’ll be able to determine how much you can spend on each guest, and also how large a Nashville wedding reception event site do you need. If you’re sticking to a budget, it’s probably all for the best to narrow down the guest list a bit so that you can afford to spend more on each guest.

Now that you’ve determined how many guests will be attending, the next thing you need to do is search for a Nashville venue for your wedding and reception. A great first choice is churches. Several Nashville area churches do not require payment from members of their congregation who wish to be married there. Some may charge a small amount. In addition, a lot of churches have a reception hall connected to it that you’ll be able to rent cheaply.

Another great option is an established wedding venue in middle Tennessee. A lot of wedding venues can provide all the services you need, such as wedding planning, catering, and other important details, and they wouldn’t cost as much as they would if you got them on your own.  That’s why many couples love to get married at places like Springhaven Mansion in Hendersonville, or Riverwood Mansion in historic east Nashville, or Historic Cedarwood “out in the country” but only minutes from downtown Nashville and C.J.’s Off the Square in lovely historic Franklin Tennessee.

How about having your wedding at home? For a little more money than you would pay to hire a maid, you can have your home transformed into a gorgeous wedding chapel.

Wedding invitations can look elegant and classy without costing an arm and a leg. If you’re going to have a small wedding, try using scrapbooking materials to create pretty personalized wedding invitations. If you’re going to have a fairly large wedding, why not try the local copy center, office supply store or supermarket warehouse? They can all offer you cheaper prices than a wedding planner or a posh stationery store could. You’ll soon find that there are even more ways to have a beautiful wedding on a budget.

Nashville Wedding Information

Ice sculptures, although nothing new, are still seen rarely enough that they can make your wedding day one of a kind. Out of 300 hundred weddings, only one incorporates the use of an ice sculpture as decoration, and the ice sculptures used are usually rather small and only used as a centrepiece or to adorn the fountain at an outdoor wedding.

Only a few artists are really good at ice sculpting, but within Nashville you’re liable to find a few that can create an ice sculpture that will raise your wedding above the rest. You can even take it one notch further and have the artist create the ice sculpture in front of your guests, during the wedding reception. Chances are, your guests will never forget your wedding because of that.

What about doing something really different with the wedding cake? You might not want to mess with the wedding cake, but the groom’s cake is up for grabs, right? At one wedding at the Opryland Hotel, the grooms cake was made to look like a Zebra. Just to be different? No, it had something to do with the family crest. So the best unique wedding idea is often one that reflects something about the bride and/or groom.

If you’re going to have an outdoor wedding on or near an open field, you can get even more creative and, in the process, make small moments into wonderful, magical memories. One way you can capture your guests’ attention is to release white doves. Though it may sound a bit ghoulish if you are looking for someone who does white dove releases, you might contact a local funeral home as they sometimes use such services. There are more things that you can do if you’re having an outdoor Nashville wedding, or if you’re holding your reception in an outdoor venue.

Assign one of your friends to the task of freeing a pretty doe from a safe distance and letting it fly across the field at the exact moment the preacher or priest pronounces your partner and you man and wife. The bride and groom can have their first kiss as a married couple as the deer crosses behind them, like something out of a fairytale. If you don’t like this idea, you can have a swan in a small pond instead. This idea has certainly been done before, but that doesn’t make it any less magical.

A twilight wedding will give you the chance to give your guests a magical experience. Locating and obtaining the services of a fireworks display team isn’t as hard or expensive as you might think. A wonderful fireworks display will certainly add a positive element to your wedding.

You can have your guests get more from this experience by giving them disposable wedding cameras and photo album wedding favors beforehand. To get more out of the fireworks display, arrange for you and your new spouse to get your picture taken with a backdrop of fireworks exploding in dazzling colors for truly unique and one-of-a-kind photographs. This is a wonderful way to delight your guests and have the opportunity to have a fabulous wedding photo taken.

Maybe none of these ideas sound that workable to you. That’s ok, maybe it’s got you to thinking. You can come up with something that fits you and would work well. The ideas are as numerous as there are weddings. At one wedding at Historic Cedarwood, the groom and groomsmen made their entrance at the wedding ceremony on motorcycles. Motorcycles was the groom’s passion, so that made sense for him. And you can bet, the guests had never seen a groom come in like that before.

These are just a few ways to make your Nashville wedding event even more special and memorable. Chances are, if you put in the time and effort, you’ll be able to come up with even more fantastic ideas.

To have a truly memorable wedding reception, decorate it with unique, one-of-a-kind pieces not usually used to decorate weddings. The only limit is your imagination. Your wedding theme will greatly affect what kind of decorations you’re going to use for the reception. If you want to have a simply decorated Nashville wedding reception site, you just need to scatter the balloons throughout the wedding venue.

For a romantic wedding reception, you can decorate with candles placed in strategic locations throughout the reception venue. You can use candles as a table centrepiece for some mood lighting. This is a cost-effective way of decorating your reception. However, keep in mind that candles have different burning times, so you should have a good idea of how long your reception is going to last and buy appropriate candles.

For short receptions, you can decorate with small voice candles. For longer receptions, however, you may want to use a large pillar candle or a few tapers instead. Remember that the key element of reception decorations is the centrepieces. To add a pop of color to the centrepiece, you can add the same kind of flowers used in the bridal bouquet. This does wonders in improving the look and feel of the table.

When talking about reception decorations, one important element that we should not forget is the wedding cake. A gorgeous wedding cake can vastly improve the overall look and atmosphere of the reception. Even if you’re only planning on having a small reception, a skilled baker can create a beautiful tiered cake by using a fake cake as a base and covering it and topping it with layers. The cake can be further accessorized with flowers, crystals and other details that will give the cake more flair.

Many established wedding sites in Nashville have tons of experience in making your wedding ceremony and reception site look wonderful…and fit your tastes. Some of these include: Historic Cedarwood, Springhaven Mansion, CJ’s Off the Square, and Riverwood Mansion.

Nashville Wedding Reception Sites

Setting a budget (and sticking to it) is recommended for couples who choose to plan and finance their own wedding. Setting a budget for wedding expenses can be considered the first step in managing all things financial as a family. In order to be financially stable and live a comfortable life free from the stress caused by financial troubles, setting and sticking to a budget is necessary. In the years to come, when children come along and financial responsibilities become harder to fulfil, a budget is the best and most practical way to assure the children’s future.

Set A Budget

Before you plan your wedding, determine the amount of money you would need to spend, and create a budget around that figure. The cost of the wedding depends on how simple or extravagant you want your wedding ceremony and reception to be, and the number of guests you expect to attend. A wedding would typically cost somewhere between thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

If you would like to have a simple, inexpensive wedding ceremony and reception, you can choose to have a morning ceremony followed by a breakfast or lunch reception, as breakfast and brunch catering is much cheaper than a sit-down meal or a dinner buffet. Some Nashville wedding venues have offered such wedding packages for budget minded couples, like the Morning Glory wedding package at Historic Cedarwood.

More Ways To Save

Try and break the wedding of your dreams into components. Keep in mind that the more components, the bigger the expenses.

If, despite your careful planning, you still manage to go over budget, one of the first things you should try is to reduce the number of guests. Next, think about what details you can live without. For example, instead of hiring an expensive wedding photographer, you can ask a friend who knows something about photography to take the wedding photos. Your friend may be happy to document your wedding for you instead of giving you a wedding gift. Just don’t expect the quality of a product as you would get from a seasoned wedding photography with multiple thousands of dollars of equipment.

If you are dead-set on having a traditional wedding, shop for your wedding dress early and try to find a dress on sale. You might also want to consider buying a gown that was previously used but still in great condition, as a used gown can be purchased at a fraction of what a new wedding dress would cost and look just as beautiful.

The groom can rent a tuxedo, and the same goes for all the other men in your wedding party.  There are several ways that you can have the Nashville wedding of your dreams without spending a fortune on the wedding expenses as long as you take the time to plan, budget, and make choices wisely.