Karen and Erik

WHO KNEW THAT TODAY WAS FREE PANCAKE DAY AT IHOP AND DID NOT TELL ME? WORST DAY EVER!

Hey Folks,

Here are some generic driving directions to and from key areas for the wedding.  Leave any questions in the comments below or send us an email.

From Airport to Residence Inn (mapquest):

1. Start out going EAST on RC JOSH BIRMINGHAM PKWY toward OLD DOWD RD.      (1.1 miles)
2. Take the BILLY GRAHAM PARKWAY SOUTH ramp toward I-77.     (0.3 miles)
3. Merge onto US-521 S.     (3.8 miles)
4. Merge onto I-77 S / US-21 S toward ROCK HILL.     (3.3 miles)
5. Merge onto I-485 E via EXIT 2 toward PINEVILLE.     (8.9 miles)
6. Take the REA RD exit- EXIT 59.     (0.2 miles)
7. Take the ramp toward PROV. RD WEST.     (<0.1 miles)
8. Merge onto REA RD.     (0.1 miles)
9. Turn LEFT onto PIPER STATION DR / PIPER STATION RD.     (0.1 miles)
10. End at Residence Inn-Charlotte Pprgln:5115 Piper Station Dr, Charlotte, NC 28277, US

From Residence Inn to Ceremony at St. Johns (mapquest):

1. Start out going SOUTHWEST on PIPER STATION DR / PIPER STATION RD toward SPINDLETOP PL.      (0.1 miles)
2. Turn RIGHT onto REA RD.     (3.3 miles)
3. Stay STRAIGHT to go onto COLONY RD.     (2.0 miles)
4. Turn RIGHT onto CARMEL RD.     (0.9 miles)
5. End at St John’s Episcopal Church:    1623 Carmel Rd, Charlotte, NC 28226, US

From Ceremony at St. Johns to Reception at Providence Country Club (mapquest):

1. Start out going NORTH on CARMEL RD toward WANDERING WAY DR.      (0.2 miles)
2. Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto FAIRVIEW RD.     (0.5 miles)
3. Turn RIGHT onto PROVIDENCE RD / NC-16 S. Continue to follow NC-16 S.     (7.7 miles)
4. Turn RIGHT onto PROVIDENCE COUNTRY CLUB DR.     (0.9 miles)
5. End at Providence Country Club: 6001 Providence Country Clb Dr, Charlotte, NC 28277, US

I’m happy to announce that we secured the florist and the cake. Flowers will be by Crawford & Co (I’d link, but they have no website yet) - a local floral design firm that had an amazing selection, great design, and a dachshund - which meant the owner and my mom have bonded. Cake will be by Edible Art - 3 tier lemon and almond poundcake with buttercream icing. Very yummy.

I also finally got off my butt and did some more work to this website - check out the Bridemaids page, with info about the girls. We’ll get around to doing the rest… eventually.

Next on our list:
Finalizing the guest list (I had no idea we knew this many people)
Creating the Save-the-Date cards, and sending them off
Have our final pre-marital planning meeting with our Reverend (Tuesday, the 25th)
Picking a registry place (Amazingly enough, Circuit City does not offer a bridal registry)
Pick out invitations
Bridesmaid dresses (This Saturday - no taffeta or butt bows allowed)
Mother of the bride dress (No taffeta or butt bows allowed)

After a couple of long, stressful months at work, Erik and I are getting our respective butts in gear on the wedding again. One thing I have had trouble with is choosing my colors. There are too many colors I like to only choose two. And the colors I DO like for the wedding are never represented in bridal magazines or websites. It’s always orange and pink, or red, or black and white, or green.

Tell us in comments - what were your colors in your wedding, or in weddings you’ve been to? How were the colors incorporated in the wedding? Am I going to be banned from the Wedding Hall of Fame if we choose more than two colors - say, an entire palette of shades in blue and green?

Today, we had a monumental wedding first: The first vendor payment. Providence Country Club is getting their deposit to secure the location. That means we’re really doing it - and not running away to Vegas.

We meant to do wedding budget planning this weekend… but funny how football and relaxing can take up your time. We’ll work on it this week. And on Saturday, if you’re in the Charlotte, NC area, be sure to look for a mad woman foaming at the mouth wearing white fluffy things - we’re going dress shopping.

By the way, if anyone reading this has not sent their address to us, please send it to karen.vigeland@gmail.com so we can send the Save the Date card and (eventually) the invite. Thanks!

No posts for the past few days but we have been busy. I didn’t want to post about it in case it didn’t happen, but tonight we got everything squared away and confirmed…

WE HAVE A DATE, WE HAVE A PLACE!

Mark your calendar - November 4th, 2006. Ceremony at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Reception at Providence Country Club (both in Charlotte, NC).

November 4th was chosen because our favorite place had it available. Also, we realized after that it will be exactly 1 year since Erik proposed. Although we had originally wanted to have the ceremony and reception in the same place, many of the ceremony sites felt like they were there as an afterthought - next to the parking lot, next to the Dumpster. The ceremony is very important to us, and we wanted it to have the feeling of importance. So we decided on St. John’s, the church I grew up in.

Verdict: Ummmm… really nice, but no

This was a very interesting location. First off, it’s in the ghetto (well about as ghetto as Charlotte gets), it’s not really located near anything (even though it only took us about 15 minutes to get there, there were no hotels within 10 miles), and it felt pretty stuffy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful place, but it’s a museum…and it felt like one. The entire time I was there, I felt like if I acted out the currator would send me back to my school bus without my lunch.

I did remember to finally bring (all the components of) our new digital camera, so we were able to get our own pictures of the place. I forgot to take a picture of the front of the museum, but I did get the main area where the reception would be (above and left). It’s a fairly long walk from the Museum (where Karen would be getting ready) to the two areas typically used for the ceremony. At one point, the coordinator had to stop talking and take a couple of deep breaths from the effort.

Hopefully, as you can see from the picture above, the back of the Museum overlooks a nice creek bed (not a horribly bad smell, but still, it was a creek) that was well maintained. There were some nice museum pieces out there and a few meandering trails with a bridge going over the creek. The most surprising thing was the the grass was still green. Every other place around here the grass turns brown after the first frost (which we had a long time ago). So it speaks to the level of care the Museum goes about keeping the place.

The main area for the reception is a large 2 story vaulted room, with a large glass chandalier hanging ominously above (it was about 12 feet tall and 20 feet in circumference). There are three semi-circular floor to ceiling windows forming the corners of the room. The entrance to the room was the corner where the fourth window could have been, had the room not been attached to the Museum. In its place was a circular room that would be ideal to use as a buffet location. The entire room was very nice, just didn’t quite have that wedding feel.

This was likely one of the more beautiful locations we’ve seen thus far, but again, it just didn’t feel like a spot to get married in.

Verdict: Perhaps…

Last Wednesday morning, Karen and I visited the Northstone Country Club, a nice location in a nice part of town - though it was a bit north of Charlotte, and might be a little longer drive than we were hoping for. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to write this place up closer to the day we actually visited (it’s been about 5 days since we saw it), but work was overwhelmingly busy this weekend, and I’ll have to see how much I can remember.

The feeling of this site was very similar to the Providence Country Club, as you might expect. However, the site for the ceremony felt a little cramped, and very much like it was put in as an afterthought. There is a gazebo (pictured left) on the side of the Club building (the side where the 6 industrial sized air conditioners are housed) with the backdrop being a couple of (very nice) houses adjacent to the Club. It seems pretty secluded, however the coordinator did mention that there have been some unruly kids in the past, though she knows what they look like and will keep them away (huh?).

The banquet hall was pretty nice and could easily accomodate our estimated guest list, and the veranda contains an awning, so no matter what the weather is like, guests can use that area if they want to get some fresh air. I didn’t like the carpet, but whatever. There is aparently no site fee, but we must use their catering services and spend a minimum of $5000 on food and beverage. Other then that, there appears to be a small number of small fees associated, but it seems fairly affordable.

The really good news is that they had our preferred date available, so we quickly put a tentative hold on it, and we now have the right of first refusal. I don’t think this will end up being our top choice, but it is nice to have an option out there in case we can’t find a better place on the date we want. I will say this though; I was quite a bit more excited about this place when we saw it last week than I am right now. I did remember to bring the camera this time…just not the power source. So again, I borrowed the pics from their site.

Next up: The Charlotte Museum

This is the only good image I found on
their site of the exterior. Sorry about
the fluffy text.

Verdict: If only they had dates available

Perhaps we should have taken the rain as an omen. You see, the first time we were scheduled to visit the Providence Country Club was directly after our visit to the Birkdale Country Club. During our visit at the Birkdale CC, it started raining, progressively increasing to a sustained downpour. Since it was 1) raining very hard, 2) approaching rush hour, and 3) almost an hour away from the Providence CC, we decided to reschedule for a later date (Monday, Jan 2nd). However, mother nature decided not to coorperate again, and we still had to visit the Providence CC during a rain storm (but at least the drive there was no longer an hour and during rush hour).

Immediately upon arrival, we could tell that this place would be very accomodating for our needs (even though our contact kept us waiting for 10 minutes - I KNOW, a whole 10 minutes, but keep in mind Bowl games were being played and I was missing them for this!).

The ceremony area, while not perfectly ideal due to the adjacent nature of the 18th hole and green and the cart path location, would have looked great in pictures and in person, and would have easily accomodated the number of guests. And there were nice possibilities in place in case of inclement weather.

The area the reception would be held was both functional and beautiful, something we’d not yet come across yet in our first four visits. The room was evenly split with a dance floor in the middle. It set up very well to place the buffet table at the end of the dance floor in front of a large window over looking the golf course with the DJ stand opposite the Dance Floor against the wall.

However, none of the dates we really wanted were available. Obviously, this is a pretty popular place, so our options were to move it to August (not our first preference due to heat), early to mid September (not our preference due to other obligations), or move it to November 4th but have it inside (not likely).

I guess it wasn’t meant to be. At least it gave us hope that an ideal location is out there, even if it’s not available on our date.

Next up on Wednesday is the Northstone Country Club (keep your fingers crossed).

Verdict: Not on your life.

We set out for Asbury Park Grove with high hopes and excitement about using our new camera. As soon as we arrived, we didn’t bother taking the camera out of our pocket.

Erik: “I am not getting married here.”
Me: “Neither am I.”
Erik: “Let’s just leave then.”
Me: “No, it will make a good story for the blog.”

This place was about 30 feet from railroad tracks, and a quarter of a mile from a trailer park. It advertised itself as being in business since the late 1800’s, but I didn’t know the 1800’s had sheet metal siding. We cautiously walked in (all to entertain our readers) and were met with the scent of… well, a combination of mildew, pee and butt. A man we’ll call “DR” greeted us - he was the manager/DJ for the place. He gave off that vibe that told us, “I’m going to hit on your mom and slip a roofie in the bridesmaid’s drink.”

(and yes, the filename they saved this
under on their web site was
“Black People”)

He gave us a tour, but our goal was to be in and out - we could only hold our breath for so long. The ceremony area was basically a small backyard with a sheet metal porch. The reception area was a dirty, smelly (we’ve mentioned the smell, right?) darkened room. When Erik mercifully got a phone call and stepped out, “DR” asked where I worked. When I told him, he said that his buddy once applied for a job there and was turned down. Then he looked at me like it was my fault. Way to make us feel welcome! He also mentioned that their staff would ensure that they were in control of the entire event. It was stressed several times, in fact - THEY ARE IN CONTROL. While I understand what I think he was trying to convey, Erik was thinking, “you don’t know my fiance. SHE is in control.”

There were so many little things about that place that added up to a big “NO” (and I’m sure Erik will add some in the comments), but overall it was dirty, smelly, in a bad part of town, next to railroad tracks, and hosted by a guy who gave us a 20 second tour and seated us at a battered wood table on filthy chairs and then told us how awesome and in control they are.

The good news - there’s another venue that looks lovely, is just barely outside of Charlotte, and is available on our first choice date. Also, we have another venue to visit on Monday - the Providence Country Club.