Welcome to “The Making of a Wedding,” the blog for the wedding of Sally and Ryan. We decided to set up this site to provide some insight to the planning and scheduling of an out of town wedding. Hopefully, this will help any couples setting up a wedding, but in particular, this site will provide the steps and measures we’re taking in setting up our out of town wedding.

Because we’ve decided to have our wedding in Louisville, KY (we’re in Los Angeles), it was important to get a venue early, especially if it was to be our first choice. We took a trip to Louisville in June and incredibly, found Riverside, The Farnsley ~ Moremen Landing. The Landing is home to one of the many historical farmhouses of Louisville. This particular location sits on 300 acres along the Ohio River in southwestern Louisville.

With the wedding being out of town, most of our research is done via the internet and the telephone. It was important to call and schedule as many appointments as possible during our trip and still leave enough room for any unscheduled additions. Luckily, we did so. Riverside was not on our original list. In fact, we didn’t even know* about it!

We drove by, visited and met with a few of our scheduled appointments and were fairly disappointed with the lack of privacy. Most of the sites we scheduled were either located in established neighborhoods or had a sense of “get ‘em in, get ‘em out”. Nothing really stood out. Because the first few appointments didn’t last as long as we anticipated, we had some extra time to take a 15 minute drive to Riverside. We knew it was the place as soon as we got out of the car. It’s amazing. So much so, I’ve provided some images.

Even more impressive than the site itself was the staff. We arrived 10 minutes after they closed to the public, but amazingly, we got the full tour. So impressed were we, we cancelled all of our appointments the following day and brought back some extra family members to check out Riverside. Everyone concurred that this was the place for us.

Another plus to the site was their wedding and event package materials. Included was a history of the location, a history of the surrounding area and a list of approved vendors (HUGE plus). With this package, we knew that the securing of food, tents, music, etc. would be much easier.

For more information, please visit riverside-landing.org.

The second most important part of our trip was finding the right photographer. This was much easier through the help of the internet. We research many sites, found many reviews and references and came across one site which really caught our eye. That was the site of Eric Graf.

We’re not a very formal couple and our wedding wasn’t going to be such either. What we were looking for in a photographer was one who was comfortable being on his/her own and creating his own feel for the event. Eric’s editorial and worldly background was exactly what we were looking for. On our last day of the trip, still buzzing from finding the perfect location, we met with Eric and blown away by him. He’s such an impressive man and as professional as they come. Again, we lucked out and found our first choice right away. We’ve secured his services and can’t wait to work with him.

For more information on Eric, please visit his site at ericgraf.com.

That’s it for the first weekend. We considered it a very successful one, but by no means were we near done with our planning. Up next…the caterer and the design.

*Our great friends, John and Kay, are natives to the city and are instrumental in the artistic community. They introduced us to the venue and without their help, we would have never found the site. We will be forever grateful.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 6:16 pm and is filed under wedding, venue, photographer, eric graf, riverside. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.