We have a date! And a venue! :O

I have just gotten back from putting the deposit on our venue, Topiaries at Beaumont!

It's such a beautiful place - we saw it when we moved house (which was four months before we got engaged), and it looked gorgeous - we didn't even know what it was called! I don't remember who suggested looking into getting married there, but we were so sure that it would be out of our price range (and we didn't even have a price range :) We did the slow-drive-by one day to find out what it was called and kept it in the back of our minds.

The first wedding magazine I got was one I borrowed from the library, and it had a little write up in there about the place. The next one I bought actually had a feature on the place under their "Perfect Day" section, and I giggled that the couple that were married there found it the same way we did - driving past it a few times (coming home from work, opposed to moving house, but then again, Tam had seen it driving around for work as well...

They had an Open Day on the 28th of February - which of course, I was working. I sent Tam on a reconnaissance mission, and he had a good time, getting the feel of the venue. Took a couple of shots of the place, grabbed as many leaflets for the photographers, cake designers, djs, dresses, suits, celebrants as he could, and talked for a little bit about the day. Peter said he would call Tam during the week to organise a time to talk more if he liked.

Piccies from the Open Day:

Ceremony area, with picnic benches for seating

Pool, which is outside the guesthouse (six rooms available)

The venue overlooks Samford Valley

Inside one of the guest rooms

The Beaumont Room, which is where we'll have our reception. The tables were done up in a few different styles.

So we organised a meeting on Sunday the 7th of March, after breakfast

Pancakes with berries and maple syrup

French Toast with Bacon (mmmbacon)

and it was so pretty!

I knew, walking back to the car that it was the place.

We did, however, want to be fully well rounded, so we wanted to look at a few other places. We checked out Tom Petrie's Restaurant and Function Centre at Old Petrie Town. It was nice... but (of course, there was a but!) it just didn't have the same vibe as Topiaries. Even between the people... the gentleman we spoke to was very nice, but ... you know when you know, you know? ;)

Old Petrie Town - Fig trees

The back of their chapel

Then again, Old Petrie Town did have a pig. Random, I know - the gentleman was showing us around the property and showing us the beautiful fig trees, where we found a pig having the time of its life, digging up around the bottom of the tree. Wasn't wild, just having a good time.

Pig.

But it was odd. OPT was asking us why we wanted a lunch time wedding, why we wanted a Friday... I felt very put off on justifying our decision. Whereas Topiaries went "Friday lunchtime? Awesome!". I dislike having to justify my decisions, having done that last week when trying on dresses (more on that another time...). And they didn't make any concessions that we were having this on a Friday lunchtime - they were charging us Saturday night rates, which I thought was a bit crap, honestly.

And then we went to a wedding at Boulevard Gardens at Indooroopilly on the weekend! Again, gorgeous area, very nice - they certainly knew what they were doing - but I didn't like that there was another wedding going on at the same time. It loses something when have other people there that aren't part of your wedding, I think.

So, we were sold on Topiaries. So I went there this afternoon and paid our deposit. We are getting married 8th April, 2011. :O Which is starting to get not that far away (I know, terrible grammar). We don't have to do anything venue wise now until about two months out.

The other reason I love this place is that we can get ready there, spend our wedding night there ... and in my imagination, I can see us going out for dinner that night, in our dolled up gear, and spending that first night just on us - which is why I like the idea of a lunchtime thing even more. And that means savings on hire cars (or putting our friends out by using their cars) and the night's accommodation is included in the $500 booking fee (which is pretty awesome).

That's us! :D