The wedding Craziness has been moved to a separate blog due to my attempt to be a wedding bee.. you can follow here: http://4weddingsnamove.blogspot.com/

But for today I will make it easy for you-

We are having the big formal wedding in the States and a "fill in adjective" in jolly old England. So before I go into the disaster that was wedding planning we need to define what this England party wedding thing is.

First it needs a name because "English wedding" just ends up confusing a lot of people. So break out the thesaurus:
Main Entry: wedding
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: marriage rite
Synonyms: bells, bridal, espousal, hook, marriage, marriage ceremony, matrimony, nuptial rite, nuptials,spousal, union, wedlock
- none of these seem to clue in on the awesome party we plan on having so how about another word:

Main Entry: party
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: social gathering
Synonyms: affair, amusement, at home, ball, banquet, barbecue, bash*, blowout, carousal, carousing,celebration, cocktails, coffee klatch, coming-out,dinner, diversion*, do*, entertainment, feast,festive occasion, festivity, fete, fun, function,gala, get-together, luncheon, movable feast,orgy, prom, reception, riot, shindig*, social,soiree, splurge, spree*, tea

DO! Its the perfect English word for a party. After all Mr. FMB will be having a stag-do and I will be having a hen-do. So the English wedding is in Sheffield (the steel city and home of The Full Monty). So its official we are having a wedding and the Sheff-Do.

Now that that is settled lets go back to our classic of "A Tale of Two Venues"

THE WEDDING:

After the very romantic proposal (that involves its own post) I immediately had a decision to make. Do I get married at home in upstate NY or at my catholic college in central MA. I browsed the options available to me in both and decided to go for the campus wedding. However it is well known that our college chapel books up 2 years in advance. In fact its rumored that if you are a couple your senior year who may get married in the future you may as well book your date before you graduate. So with Mr. FMB's brother on a trip around the world, we settled on a end of July date and had a backup just in case.

Well I call up the chapel- date, time, open, booked, done. The college has a beautiful ballroom right on campus and the surrounding area has many other venues but are a good drive away. With everyone traveling to the wedding from as far as TX, CA and England (and we shouldn't let those last ones loose on roads with MA drivers) I went to book the ballroom- date, time, open, booked, done. I decided I was done planning the wedding for then (we were 11 months out still). Now before you venue crazed brides out there create a voodoo doll and pull out the pins remember... this is a Tale of TWO venues, so there must be more to come.

THE SHEFF-DO

Now due to round trip flights from England being in excess of $1000 in July many of Mr. FMB's friends are not able to make the trip (Luckily his entire family can though). So in comes the Sheff-Do. Mr. FMB being the diligent groom he is did some research around the same time I was booking the venue stateside. He saw a venue in the cheery English summer and liked it, however he did not want to book it without me seeing it. So several months later I am in England in December and we looked at the venue and WWIII began. Luckily a treaty was signed just as I was heading back to the states for work.

We continued to do some research and discussed what we wanted for the Sheff-Do with the safety barrier of the Atlantic Ocean between us. We picked out three locations: traditional ballroom in hotel outside the city, traditional ballroom in hotel inside the city, the skyline suite at an athletics facility inside the city. So we made appointments last weekend and took a train over to Sheffield. However this time we were armed with a secret weapon, one that allowed us to pick an amazing venue and and still save over 50%....

we changed our date to... a... Friday. This allowed us to book the best venue that we both fell in love with and still be able to afford furniture for the new house (although we may want to steal the hotels chairs). Which one do you think we decided on?

I will reveal pics of both venues tomorrow. What was your venue search like- too easy or did it require a mediator?