Just In Case You Were Wondering

I realized that after all of this time I've never written about our venue, Battery Gardens. We'll be having our ceremony outside (at least it's the plan...please pray to the weather gods for us) with the restaurant facing the New York harbor. While I love the water view (Mr. Swan and I are really coastal people), it does not have the "Va VaVoom" view of the River Cafe in Brooklyn (we looked there too), but I think it's pretty nonetheless.

(source)

Above are some photos courtesy of Mrs. Firefly. (Thank you, Mrs. Firefly!!) If you look really hard in the photo on the left, you can see the Statue of Liberty.

In case of rain, we'll have the ceremony upstairs. I'm still thinking nice dry warm thoughts. The upstairs portion of the restaurant will also serve as our reception space. Since we're having a summer wedding, I wanted our guests to have the option to be able to have access to outdoor space to enjoy the sunshine, which they can enjoy on its lovely balcony. Here's the reception area set up for Mrs. Firefly's reception. It's my understanding that you might get them to budge with the setup and be a bit more creative. We'll see....

(source)

We ended up picking Battery Gardens for many reasons:

1) We loved its sleek, modern look (Mr. Swan and I are definitely lovers of modern, clean lines).

2) The easy to access (The Staten Island Ferry and two subway lines are right next door) and very pretty location.

3) We didn't need to look at multiple places for a ceremony and reception, and we didn't need to look for a caterer (if you haven't realized I can be pretty lazy on the wedding planning front).

4) We didn't have to rent or bring in items (see above re: laziness).

5) The size of the space was right for the price (although we did compromise on a daytime wedding).

Were there any features that you were looking for your venue search?

By the way, here is a link to another beautiful Battery Gardens wedding and another.