Respectacled! / Wedding Venue Tour de Force
I finally picked up my corrected eyeglasses on Monday, one month to the day after I picked up the original pair. The prescription is much better-I don't really feel like one eye is significantly weaker than the other.
So, I went to Virginia with Jenny last week to look at wedding venues. Here's a (sort of) quick recap…
◘
Sunday: Drove six hours to a house on stilts not far from downtown Charlottesville. It was chilly and rainy all day, and we were glad to have a wood-burning stove to cozy up to. The "Treehouse" was full of books on gender studies, race, politics, and poetry. I chose to read Calvin & Hobbes.
The Treehouse's rustic atmosphere was evident in its bathroom, which was only accessible by walking onto the deck, around back, and through the door past the outdoor shower. Yes, an outdoor shower. Thankfully, the water was hot enough to counteract the 50° chills.
Monday: Our first venue tour, at Triple C Camp, was sunny and pleasant. We were impressed by all the amenities offered for a relatively cheap rental fee: shelter with built-in sound, fire circle, mess hall with large commercial kitchen, basketball court, hiking trails, wooded clearings, and more. It was easy to get heady from the excitement of picturing our wedding there. We pondered this while sipping wine at Jefferson Vineyards, which raised their tasting fee, but included take-home Riedel glasses.
We also went thrifting at Goodwill and Salvation Army. I was looking for possible clothing pieces to wear as the groom, and we were also shopping for cheap glasses to use at our wedding. We found plenty of those throughout the week; we gathered more than twenty glasses in all, and each of them cost 50¢ or less. The best finds for me, though, were the records at Salvation Army. I found two Steve Reich recordings on ECM-Octet • Music for a Large Ensemble • Violin Phase (the first full Reich album I ever listened to) and Music for 18 Musicians. Even more exciting was Laurie Anderson's five-LP United States Live, a compilation of performances from the show that her more famous album Big Science was based on. At over four hours, I've only gotten through two of the records so far. The best part about all the records I found? They only cost $1 per disc, making United States Live only $5.
Tuesday: We had three appointments on this, our busiest day. At noon, we stopped at Harvest Moon Catering for a tasting and consultation. We had told them our ideas for what food we'd want at our wedding, and they created a customized menu based on them. We started off with some delicious cheeses and antipasti, then went through a tasty lunch of grilled tofu skewers with peanut sauce, spanakopita, crab cakes with Creole rémoulade, fried green tomatoes, Thai noodles with grilled shrimp, and a vegetable mixture of carrots, asparagus, and sugar snap peas. Yes, we got to keep the leftovers.
Our next meeting was with PK, the owner of Splendora's Gelato, the dessert and coffee shop Jenny and I loved during our summer in Charlottesville (and the place where I worked for several months when I lived there). We brainstormed a bit on possibilities for gelato cakes to have at the wedding, and Jenny and I shared zabaione and blackberry-plum gelato. We spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the shops along the Downtown Mall, then stopping at yet another Goodwill, where I found Wesley Willis's Joe Hunter#2 with an autographed CD booklet for $2.
As the sun set behind the mountains, we drove to Panorama Farms, a large patch of land with an old barn that is being fitted with modern wiring and flooring to turn it into a more viable venue. Our tour took us over grassy hills and put us in awe of the views.
Wednesday: It got cold and cloudy again, making our visit to James Monroe's Ash Lawn-Highland somewhat unpleasant. However, the grounds and the mountains that were barely visible through the fog perked us up. Like Panorama, they are working on a barn for events, except theirs is a new construction on the foundation of an older structure. Our second tour of the day was at Carter Mountain Orchard, an excellent summer destination for fruit and mountaintop views. It was the off-season, though, and with the low clouds, everything was gloomy and chilly. (And there were no apple cider donuts, either!)
Afterward, we met up with my friend Elizabeth, my former Splendora's coworker who is building her reputation as an independent photographer. Ostensibly there to discuss using her services for our wedding, we mostly ate leftover Mardi Gras red beans and rice and chatted for hours.
Thursday: Finally, our day off from wedding business! We got some work done at the Treehouse, then visited the UVa Art Museum and the Small Special Collections Library. It had been a gray day already, but the rain picked up as we left for the Treehouse, and by the time we arrived, the streets were flooding-and so was the creek across the yard from our lodgings. Rushing water dyed reddish-brown by the Virginia clay rose over the banks and made it over the lawn, lapping at our stairs before subsiding an hour later. Having dried off, we headed to Rapture on the Downtown Mall to have dinner and join Elizabeth and James for the Geeks Who Drink pub quiz, in lieu of our usual Trivi-YEAH! at the Whig on Wednesdays. As an homage to our Columbia teammates, we named ourselves Robot Foursome. We got fourth place, fittingly.
Friday: We left the Treehouse for the last time, along with a note apologizing for apparently melting the space heater by keeping it too close to the wood stove. We drove out to Fairview, a bed & breakfast on farmland in Amherst County. No one was there to meet us; it turned out that our contact had something come up, and she left a note on the door telling us to check out the house ourselves. It was a little frou-frou, but the view was indeed fair. As we explored, various animals appeared-ducks apparently herded by a rooster, peacocks and peahens, and horses. A rooster and a hen pecked open an egg on the grass and ate the yolk. Gross.
We ate lunch at Blue Mountain Brewery, where we had a delicious sampler of beers and white pizza with local sausage. For dessert, we had a tasting at Albemarle CiderWorks, which we had seen featured in Mother Earth News. Back in town, I found a $58 three-piece suit that fit me almost exactly at Low (formerly Antics), a Downtown Mall vintage store. For dinner, we walked to the Baja Bean down the road from our hotel. (No margaritas, though; the beer and cider were enough.)
Saturday: Our last venue tour was Montfair, our favorite prior to the trip, though perhaps the most expensive. There were several rental cottages by a lake, a lodge with included tent, and a hilltop by a horse pasture with a wide view of the Blue Ridge. Just up the road was Mountfair, where we had a wine tasting. Perhaps our favorite stop of the day was Starr Hill Brewery in Crozet, where we had a free tasting of delicious beers and got to take a more in-depth brewery tour than I'm used to. (We got to taste the actual barley and hops they use, which I've never done before.) We bought a six-pack of The Love (which has a hint of banana) and four pint glasses to expand our home glassware collection. We mused on the idea of having a pre-wedding winery/brewery/cidery tour with our wedding party. For dinner, we went to Himalayan Fusion, which had good food, but lackluster service-I ordered the lamb vindaloo, but received chicken instead, and waited a long time for water refills before I piped up. On our way back to the car, some unseen pranksters dropped foam cups with ice water from the bridge above us, and barely missed. All I could do was blurt out, "Hey!-Asshole!"
Sunday: We drove back to Columbia, gaining sunlight and warmth as we headed south. When we picked up Gidget, she was so excited that she broke free from the handler's grasp on her leash and charged at Jenny.
And so we're back in the swing of the semester. I'm waiting on my wedding band to arrive, and we'll be coming to a decision about the wedding venue before March is over (if we can manage it). Right now, it's narrowed to Triple C Camp (the cheapest, yet versatile) and Montfair (the most expensive, but the best reconciliation of the view, travel from town, lodging options, and included amenities).
◙
So, I went to Virginia with Jenny last week to look at wedding venues. Here's a (sort of) quick recap…
◘
Sunday: Drove six hours to a house on stilts not far from downtown Charlottesville. It was chilly and rainy all day, and we were glad to have a wood-burning stove to cozy up to. The "Treehouse" was full of books on gender studies, race, politics, and poetry. I chose to read Calvin & Hobbes.
The Treehouse's rustic atmosphere was evident in its bathroom, which was only accessible by walking onto the deck, around back, and through the door past the outdoor shower. Yes, an outdoor shower. Thankfully, the water was hot enough to counteract the 50° chills.
Monday: Our first venue tour, at Triple C Camp, was sunny and pleasant. We were impressed by all the amenities offered for a relatively cheap rental fee: shelter with built-in sound, fire circle, mess hall with large commercial kitchen, basketball court, hiking trails, wooded clearings, and more. It was easy to get heady from the excitement of picturing our wedding there. We pondered this while sipping wine at Jefferson Vineyards, which raised their tasting fee, but included take-home Riedel glasses.
We also went thrifting at Goodwill and Salvation Army. I was looking for possible clothing pieces to wear as the groom, and we were also shopping for cheap glasses to use at our wedding. We found plenty of those throughout the week; we gathered more than twenty glasses in all, and each of them cost 50¢ or less. The best finds for me, though, were the records at Salvation Army. I found two Steve Reich recordings on ECM-Octet • Music for a Large Ensemble • Violin Phase (the first full Reich album I ever listened to) and Music for 18 Musicians. Even more exciting was Laurie Anderson's five-LP United States Live, a compilation of performances from the show that her more famous album Big Science was based on. At over four hours, I've only gotten through two of the records so far. The best part about all the records I found? They only cost $1 per disc, making United States Live only $5.
Tuesday: We had three appointments on this, our busiest day. At noon, we stopped at Harvest Moon Catering for a tasting and consultation. We had told them our ideas for what food we'd want at our wedding, and they created a customized menu based on them. We started off with some delicious cheeses and antipasti, then went through a tasty lunch of grilled tofu skewers with peanut sauce, spanakopita, crab cakes with Creole rémoulade, fried green tomatoes, Thai noodles with grilled shrimp, and a vegetable mixture of carrots, asparagus, and sugar snap peas. Yes, we got to keep the leftovers.
Our next meeting was with PK, the owner of Splendora's Gelato, the dessert and coffee shop Jenny and I loved during our summer in Charlottesville (and the place where I worked for several months when I lived there). We brainstormed a bit on possibilities for gelato cakes to have at the wedding, and Jenny and I shared zabaione and blackberry-plum gelato. We spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the shops along the Downtown Mall, then stopping at yet another Goodwill, where I found Wesley Willis's Joe Hunter#2 with an autographed CD booklet for $2.
As the sun set behind the mountains, we drove to Panorama Farms, a large patch of land with an old barn that is being fitted with modern wiring and flooring to turn it into a more viable venue. Our tour took us over grassy hills and put us in awe of the views.
Wednesday: It got cold and cloudy again, making our visit to James Monroe's Ash Lawn-Highland somewhat unpleasant. However, the grounds and the mountains that were barely visible through the fog perked us up. Like Panorama, they are working on a barn for events, except theirs is a new construction on the foundation of an older structure. Our second tour of the day was at Carter Mountain Orchard, an excellent summer destination for fruit and mountaintop views. It was the off-season, though, and with the low clouds, everything was gloomy and chilly. (And there were no apple cider donuts, either!)
Afterward, we met up with my friend Elizabeth, my former Splendora's coworker who is building her reputation as an independent photographer. Ostensibly there to discuss using her services for our wedding, we mostly ate leftover Mardi Gras red beans and rice and chatted for hours.
Thursday: Finally, our day off from wedding business! We got some work done at the Treehouse, then visited the UVa Art Museum and the Small Special Collections Library. It had been a gray day already, but the rain picked up as we left for the Treehouse, and by the time we arrived, the streets were flooding-and so was the creek across the yard from our lodgings. Rushing water dyed reddish-brown by the Virginia clay rose over the banks and made it over the lawn, lapping at our stairs before subsiding an hour later. Having dried off, we headed to Rapture on the Downtown Mall to have dinner and join Elizabeth and James for the Geeks Who Drink pub quiz, in lieu of our usual Trivi-YEAH! at the Whig on Wednesdays. As an homage to our Columbia teammates, we named ourselves Robot Foursome. We got fourth place, fittingly.
Friday: We left the Treehouse for the last time, along with a note apologizing for apparently melting the space heater by keeping it too close to the wood stove. We drove out to Fairview, a bed & breakfast on farmland in Amherst County. No one was there to meet us; it turned out that our contact had something come up, and she left a note on the door telling us to check out the house ourselves. It was a little frou-frou, but the view was indeed fair. As we explored, various animals appeared-ducks apparently herded by a rooster, peacocks and peahens, and horses. A rooster and a hen pecked open an egg on the grass and ate the yolk. Gross.
We ate lunch at Blue Mountain Brewery, where we had a delicious sampler of beers and white pizza with local sausage. For dessert, we had a tasting at Albemarle CiderWorks, which we had seen featured in Mother Earth News. Back in town, I found a $58 three-piece suit that fit me almost exactly at Low (formerly Antics), a Downtown Mall vintage store. For dinner, we walked to the Baja Bean down the road from our hotel. (No margaritas, though; the beer and cider were enough.)
Saturday: Our last venue tour was Montfair, our favorite prior to the trip, though perhaps the most expensive. There were several rental cottages by a lake, a lodge with included tent, and a hilltop by a horse pasture with a wide view of the Blue Ridge. Just up the road was Mountfair, where we had a wine tasting. Perhaps our favorite stop of the day was Starr Hill Brewery in Crozet, where we had a free tasting of delicious beers and got to take a more in-depth brewery tour than I'm used to. (We got to taste the actual barley and hops they use, which I've never done before.) We bought a six-pack of The Love (which has a hint of banana) and four pint glasses to expand our home glassware collection. We mused on the idea of having a pre-wedding winery/brewery/cidery tour with our wedding party. For dinner, we went to Himalayan Fusion, which had good food, but lackluster service-I ordered the lamb vindaloo, but received chicken instead, and waited a long time for water refills before I piped up. On our way back to the car, some unseen pranksters dropped foam cups with ice water from the bridge above us, and barely missed. All I could do was blurt out, "Hey!-Asshole!"
Sunday: We drove back to Columbia, gaining sunlight and warmth as we headed south. When we picked up Gidget, she was so excited that she broke free from the handler's grasp on her leash and charged at Jenny.
And so we're back in the swing of the semester. I'm waiting on my wedding band to arrive, and we'll be coming to a decision about the wedding venue before March is over (if we can manage it). Right now, it's narrowed to Triple C Camp (the cheapest, yet versatile) and Montfair (the most expensive, but the best reconciliation of the view, travel from town, lodging options, and included amenities).
◙