Wedding Planning Update #38 - Final Menu Selection & Centerpiece Design
This morning started out with a trip where Kris and I attempted to visit two Somerset County parks which had been suggested by Gina at the Somerset Hills Hotel as places that might be nice to take our wedding pictures at. Since the information I had gotten online told us to call about obtaining a permit for wedding photos, I wanted to actually go to the parks to see if it was worth it to find out more information. The first park was the Colonial Park, where there’s a really nice rose garden, and an area that’s pictured online with a Gazebo. It was pretty nice, although the flowers weren’t really in bloom, and we didn’t have a huge amount of time to look around. I wasn’t impressed that we’d have to walk in some areas on the grass, and this park, as we realized when we left, wasn’t really “on the way” or as convenient to get to as I’d originally thought.
Our next stop for the day was another meeting with the aforementioned Gina at the Somerset Hills Hotel. Kris and I had spent time picking out our menu choices from the serving dishes to our cake earlier, so it was a breeze to go over those things. The only thing we had to wait on was the entree, salad, and served appetizer choices, but we made those decisions easily on Saturday night. We went over the details for our signature drink, the cake type and filling, as well as the design (it is going to be the beaded design that’s on my dress - it should turn out awesome!), and whether or not we would have bows on the seat covers (we decided no). We met our maitre’d, Steve Benyo, who was also really nice.
However, I think the MOST important thing that we talked about was whether or not the name change would be taking place before the wedding (probably not, or if it is it will be something simple like “Somerset Hills Hotel by Doubletree”) and when the renovations would be taking place. The latest update is that those renovations are assured to “not interfere with our event,” but are also unlikely to occur anytime before September. This is a double-edge sword, because although it’s great the hotel won’t be in shambles and full of scaffolding for our wedding, but it’s also a bummer that we’ll miss out on all the nice new stuff. At least we know now it’s less likely to be something we need to worry about.
After this meeting, we had barely enough time to grab lunch, so we delayed going to the second park until after we met with Catherine, our florist at the Somerset Hills Florist. She was awesome, so accommodating in communicating with me through email, and she’d set up two trial centerpiece ideas for us to look at and work with. We ended up using some of the same flowers, but a completely different design than either of the two pieces she’d already made. They will be short glass vases with purple and blue rocks holding up a bunch of the Dendrovium blue-dyed Orchids surrounded by white hydrangea. It looked really great in the mock-up and I’m excited about the details coming together. The best part was that Catherine gave us the orchids to take home!
Our final stop was to see the garden nearby the hotel, the Leonard J. Buck Garden, which was on our way back home. Unfortunately, the gates were just being closed as we pulled up, and we realized we had arrived after the hours of operation anyway. It was a huge disappointment to me, because I really wanted to see if this garden would have a nicer area to take pictures and if it would be worthwhile to call to ask about the permits. We should have time to maybe go back tomorrow.
