The Dairy Barn: Picking our Wedding Venue

 Last September we did not have a single wedding related thing planned. Oh, that day feels ages ago... In fact we were still deciding what state to have our wedding. You see, my dad lives in Charlotte, NC and my hometown is in a small town in PA, while Brandon's family is basically all in the Ohio/ PA area. Our first thought was to have the wedding in PA where it would be closer to the majority of our families and friends. But then, I realized how hard it would be to plan a wedding over 600 miles from where we live in Columbia, SC. Sooo, I started looking more locally. The one thing that was for sure was I wanted to have a rustic barn wedding. Both of us love old, reclaimed items as well as the outdoors so it seemed like the perfect pick. 

So I researched and searched for a barn that was nice enough to hold a wedding and at least 130 guests. Who would have thought that it would be hard to find a barn with all of the Pinterest pictures of barn weddings, right?? ...Wrong. Barns are hard to come by. However, I was able to find one that was just a half hour South of where my dad lives called The Dairy Barn in Fort Mill, SC. Brandon and I made a weekend trip up to see the barn and meet with the staff and see my dad as well. 

When we pulled up the gravel road and saw The Dairy Barn, I knew it was love at first sight. This was where we HAD to have our wedding. It was perfect. The upstairs level of the barn was open wood beams and needed no extra decorations to make it beautiful enough for a ceremony. And the downstairs was the perfect size for our guests as well as an awesome dance floor. 

Could you blame me for falling in love with it?! 

We got to the end of our tour and started talking $$$ with the staff. And by $$$, it was more like $$$$, which was MUCH more than I was expecting. In fact, the price of this baby for an 8 hour wedding day was $3,000 not including chairs, tables, linens, etc which would cost a good $2,000 more with the company The Dairy Barn has a partnership with. My dreams were shattered. When  imagining how much our wedding would cost in total, I was already planning on DIY'ing a lot of it and hoped that would keep us around $10K total for the entire wedding. At this point, I could not imagine how we could make it work. 

Long story short, when my dad offered to help us out with the barn cost as well as the majority of the wedding, I would be lying if I didn't say B & I sighed a HUGE sigh of relief seeing as I still had not gotten hired by any of the positions I had applied for at this point. 

Calling The Dairy Barn and telling them that we would take it for 09.28.2013 was the first gigantic step on our wedding planning journey and as great as it felt to have an amazing venue, at this point I knew we had a LOOONG way to go. 

Peace,
Allison

.: If you like this wedding post, check out our Rustic DIY Barn Wedding tab above or click on the link!:.