Today we put down a deposit for our venue!!! The ceremony and reception will be held at the Historic Grand Ballroom and Theatre in Salem, OR (where we're from) but be done on different floors. The ceremony will be held in the theater on the ground floor then guests will go upstairs in mostly original elevator or up 4 flights of stairs to the reception room and attached ballroom. When we visited the site the original plan was to have the ceremony in the ballroom and the reception in the adjoining room but there was a "special" going on that if you booked by the end of January the theater was included with the upstairs rooms (a $600 savings). If it were not for that we would have not rented the theater (budget reasons). I think having the ceremony downstairs will help prevent the feeling of being "stuck" in a room since the ceremony and reception are in the same building.
Oh yeah.. we settled on Saturday, Aug. 11, 2012!! We met and started dating Aug. of 2004, and engaged Aug. 10, 2010 so getting married in Aug. just made sense.
Sorry for my long windedness.