Finding Dream Wedding Venues | NJ Wedding Photographer | Rustic Charm Country Barn Unique Wedding | Rustic Chic Wedding Style

My fiance found our dream wedding venue, really by accident. He was looking on website after website just like I was in search for the perfect venue for us. I honestly thought after photographing weddings in so many different venues that I had the search narrowed down to a select few but I was completely wrong. NJ, NY, PA & CT have a enormous amount of wedding venues, some that you wouldn’t even think of as wedding venues, like museums & gardens! So our search began and little did we know that the very first place that we looked at would become our favorite.

Mike and I drove all over NJ & PA visiting venue to venue. Our first stop was Perona Farms. We came to Perona Farms to look at the ballroom that we had seen on their website. When we arrived, we decided that we loved the grounds but we were not in love with the ballroom. It was just simply not us. I am not a princess and I do not love tiaras, if you do, maybe it is the perfect location for you. The building was really lovely, but we wanted something more unique as we are both very unique individuals. I also loved that there were 5 locations that you can get married at on their premises, which really makes the possibilities endless.

When we first asked the salesman about the barn on their premises, he kindly walked us over to it and told us about their plans to convert this space into a wedding venue by the following year. Mike and I’s ears and eyes lit up instantly. Of course, at the time we had to use our imagination as the barn needed a lot of work but the plans that they were describing sounded exactly like what we had wanted. We fell in love with a vision and as the months came closer, the vision started to become a reality. We really put a lot of faith and hope into our decision, but luckily it worked out better than we could have ever imagined.

Before we made a final decision, we went home and back to the computers. We researched every barn in a 2 hour radius along a few wineries and every other venue did not have a complete package, meaning even things like the tables, chairs, table linens, silverware, etc…. were not included, just the rental of the space. On top of designing all of my decor, I really didn’t want to have to worry about renting everything down to the fork and it makes it harder to determine a realistic budget. This brought us back to Perona Farms to sign a contract and start the process of making this vision a reality.

The lesson that I learned from this first segment of wedding planning on my blog is: don’t forget to ask questions and don’t be afraid of telling the vendors what you want and what your vision is. If we didn’t ask the questions, we would have never known about the barn renovation and our wedding day would have been completely different.

xo

Image by Kay English Photography