Unexpected Venue Choice

Whatever aversions I had to hotel ballroom weddings (and thanks to being in wedding blogland for a while, I had a lot) fizzled pretty quickly when we realized that their wedding 'packages' would mean a little less planning for us and a lot more convenience for our guests.  Those things are hard to definitively put a price on, but when we did the calculations as best we could we figured that having our ceremony and reception at a hotel (depending on the specific hotel, of course because I'm not talking the Ritz Carlton here) might cost us $1-2000 more than another venue.  And we decided that was worth it to us. 

When we went to visit the Parc 55 Hotel we were already impressed with some of their package perks (free suite for the wedding night, free hour of open bar, etc.).  We toured some of the typical ceremony spaces on the lower floors when, on a whim, I asked the coordinator whether they had any spaces with unbelievable views, even if the room wasn't technically an event space.  She led us up to the Club Lounge on the 30-somethingth floor.  The room is small and awkwardly laid out, not all of ours guests would be able to have a seat, and there are some elements of the room we would definitely need to camouflage. 

That said, ohmystars - the view!  Just... breathtaking!  We were there in the daytime, so with all the windows around the room there was a gorgeous view of downtown San Francisco and the bay.  Mr. FW and I were floored.  We stood there quietly staring out the windows together, soaking in our unspoken agreement that we really wanted to get married in that.very.spot.  We didn't need to see anything else, because we were clearly sold.  This was our venue!

In my mind I was trying to picture what those windows would look like at night, full of city lights.  Going back to the site many months later, here is what I found:

{Forgive the terrible quality.  But even with it, you can see the awesomeness, right?}

Ah-mazing!  We love, love, love it!  Of course, like any space, it has its challenges.  The view from the entry door is strange:

{ceremony location on the other side of this built-in marble table}

There are some cabinets, a tv, and a breakfast prep area that I'd like to conceal:

{Any idea how we could cover these?}

And... the thing I didn't give all that much thought to when we booked the place, the lighting:



{Oh hello strange lighting scheme, uninvited reflection, and washed-out city lights.}

If you notice in this picture, you can see that the lighting scheme consists of overhead recessed lighting (not on because it's bright) and several floor lamps (awkward for a ceremony, yeah?).  Also, and this is the dealbreaker for me, the lamplight is being reflected in the window!  Yes, in the window that would be our ceremony backdrop!  I want pictures of us in front of the city lights, not us in front of reflections of floor lamps.  So we're going to send some of these pictures to our photographers and ask for their input about how to tackle the lighting in the room. 

So that's the unique little space where we're going to hold the ceremony.  Then everyone will traipse downstairs to the ballroom, where we will use 2 of the 3 ballroom sections.  Here is one of the sections set up conference-style:

{let's just keep this set-up, shall we?}

As you can probably tell, I am not a person who is generally compelled by pictures of traditional hotel ballroom receptions.  I blame this almost entirely on blogland, but I also have to take some responsibility for it.  See, we're not having flowers.  And we're not going to use round tables.  We're not going to have a multi-tier wedding cake.  And we probably won't have a dj.  Ya know, all the things that are usually associated with hotel ballroom receptions.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with those things, of course.  We're just not going that route, which means that we are absurdly committed to finding ways to have a nontraditional wedding in a fairly traditional hotel setting.  The first step for us was choosing an offbeat ceremony location at the hotel.  The next step is to successfully decorate the ballroom in a way that conveys our laidback-chic DIY-craftastic style.  We have lot of ideas, but of course it's the execution that counts!

Did you include any hotels in your venue search - why or why not?  And if you've ever seen a nontraditionally-styled hotel wedding, what did it look like?