My mom and I always had a thing where rainbows remind us of my dad, and how we almost always see rainbows when we're together {because it makes daddy happy}. :)
Douglas and I arrived into Oregon City 5 minutes early {I'm great at timing things} and found our potential venue: The Abernethy Center. The pictures show this sweet gazebo amidst lots of trees for the ceremony, and a cozy ballroom for the reception. We walked around and viewed the facilities with a woman named Elizabeth, but had kind of a funny feeling about the whole place the entire time we were there. I never once had that, "Oh my god, I could get married here!" feeling. And yes, I understand it's in the middle of January and that it doesn't look like that at more ideal times to get married. I thought that they did a great job of making it look beautiful for being a facility in the heart of Oregon City {which itself is a little run down}, but that's the thing: it felt like they MADE it beautiful. It isn't a naturally beautiful venue.
What was also off putting was the woman Elizabeth who showed us around. She was obviously "at work" and doing what she needed to do, and she didn't seem like she cared much at all. If we were to have our wedding there, she would be my coordinator and I didn't feel much of a connection with her at all. During the tour I had casually mentioned my friend Heather who is getting married around the same time we are and is having a significantly larger wedding, and she honestly asked me more questions about Heather's wedding than my own! I thought, "HELLO! I'M your client, I'M your bride!" and was very put off about how she wanted me to have my friend get in touch with her. Don't try and get me to sell someone else to your venue when I'm there looking for my own wedding! Ugh.
{I digress.}
All in all there were some very good things about the venue, and some not-so-good things too.
+ The location is close to hotels and close to Portland so people from out of town wouldn't have to drive too far
+ I've always wanted to get married in a gazebo {like my parents}. Check.
+ A lot of the stuff is inclusive, so the venue takes care of the food, setting up/tearing down, coordination the day-of, room service to the brides and grooms' rooms, etc.
+ The ballroom is nicely sized and has a cute patio that joins to it for some outdoor reception space too
+ A lot of the packages are customizable, so you can really pick and choose what you want and don't have to pay for things you don't want
- The venue is right next to a busy street, so it isn't very private
- The venue holds more than one wedding per day, so it's also not very private in that way too
- The scenery and reception facility isn't all that unique
- The coordinator made it feel like we were "just another wedding", nothing particularly special
- The price would get spendy with some of the customizable options we would want to do {ex: the chairs were ugly, so we'd need to upgrade them}
- Douglas seemed bored the entire time {hey- that's important!}
- ... see my above post
All in all I think this facility would be fine, but it's not perfect for us. I hope that when we find the place that we'll get that feeling of, "Oh my gosh, I want to get married here!" It was also a good experience to start learning some things that we like or want, and things that we don't want. We still have a list of several places we're looking to visit in the upcoming couple of months, and hopefully the place we want to get married is among them! We'll just have to wait and see. :)
<3 J
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