Weddings in North Carolina

This comment on Snipes Farm as an outdoor wedding venue in the Triangle area (NC) was sent to me by a bride, with current prices for rental:

I absolutely loved Snipes Farm. I can see that you’ve already been there but I’ll share my thoughts anyway.

Robert Snipes doesn’t have a great memory and seems a little flaky but he was incredibly kind and patient, which goes a long way with me. He answered all of my questions and has put a lot of effort into making his farm handicap accessible. Also very very important to me.

He called us about 20 minutes after we left and was very concerned that he had forgotten to show us the upstairs. I’ve called him twice since then with specific questions and he’s been patient and informative.

It’s 2000 dollars for the weekend and that includes Friday morning until 9pm, Saturday until 12am and Sunday until 12pm for cleanup. That price also includes 12 60″ tables and 100 chairs. He requires 50% down, which seems standard. I also thought the little bridal suite was really cozy.

While I’m on the subject of outdoor weddings, there is something else to consider, besides weather: NOISE.

Unfortunately many lovely spots are unsuitable for weddings, in my opinion, because they are so near highways or other noisy roads that the ceremony CAN’T BE HEARD.

Think about it: the officiant faces the assembled guests and officiants are usually pretty good at projecting their voices. But the bride and groom are facing away from their friends and family. Trust me, you will not be heard.

Also, at many weddings guests and family members are asked to do readings. Very few of them have had training in projecting their voices, and so these carefully-selected poems and passages from the bible are heard by nobody whatsoever if there’s traffic noise. This has wrecked several ceremonies I’ve played at.

For instance, Fearrington House is a very popular venue for outdoor weddings. They have many indoor areas for rent (at very high prices) for weddings, but they also offer outdoor ceremonies. If you choose to get married at Fearrington and want to hold your ceremony outdoors, be sure to go there and pick your spot based not only on SHADE available at your time of day (if you’re marrying during the hot months) but also on NOISE LEVEL. We played at an outdoor wedding there one late spring and the wedding planner and bride and groom were roaming around frantically just before the wedding trying to find a spot that wasn’t under direct sunlight – then, the spot they picked was so noisy they might as well have gotten married on the verge of the highway and saved their money!

A wedding florist I know wrote this to me: “Have you done one at the Greystone Inn in Durham? The traffic from the freeway drowns out everything from the wedding. If they don’t have microphones, no one can hear the vows.”

I don’t recommend it because:

1. No cover in case of rain.
2. Everybody has to walk a long long way from the parking lot, down a narrow muddy unattractive path, to get to this spot. No alternative for people who have trouble walking.
3. Biggest problem: the site is near a big road and roaring traffic drowns out the softspoken young people.

My daughter’s getting married at noon on a Sunday. She decided she wanted people to be able to get together the night before, as well, because out of towners will probably arrive on Saturday.

So she’s throwing a party for a hundred people at the new Torero’s location on Chapel Hill Boulevard, in Oak Creek Village shopping center on 15-501 business, across from Toyota. This is a big building that’s been empty for a long time and they’ve painted it – it looks grand now – and it’s all beautifully painted with rich, lively colors inside. There’s a back room with seating for about 80 or 100 people.

Here’s their catering menu. Ruben, the owner, is going to cordon off the back for us and serve a buffet of various Mexican foods: rice and beans, enchiladas, tacos, burritos, chips and salsa, etc. with soft drinks, tea, sangria, and beer. The buffet (not including alcohol) will be around $11 per person, and considering that we don’t have to pay extra for the room, this seems like a spectacular deal. He’s a great local vendor, well worth supporting. I eat at Toreros often and it feels like home.

Sorry about the unprofessional videography. Do not hire me to shoot your wedding…

I was at a bridal vendors event lately and while I did not meet this vendor, the idea seems interesting:

Chantel Smith, “event coordinator,” is offering a flat-rate $5,000 package which includes:

Events in a Box, NC.

The biggest space available is the dining hall.

Maximum capacity is 200 people. Meeting space accommodates 150.
Day Use – 1-60 people: $330 per day, 61+ people: $5.50 per person, per day

The Dining Hall is a large open room with a central fireplace and a front wall of windows letting in natural light. The room is uniquely sectioned into three parts; partitions can be used to close off part of the room or left open to utilize the entire space. The tile flooring is newly re-finished! The building has central heat, air conditioning and bathroom facilities. The kitchen is closed for renovation, but a large refrigerator is accessible for rental use. The Dining Hall has a covered front porch that is the width of the building with rocking chairs and has picnic tables on its front lawn.

Maximum capacity is 150. Meeting space accommodates 125.
Day Use – 1-50 people: $250 per day, 51+ people: $5.00 per person, per day

This building is 1800 square feet and is one large, open space with central heat and air conditioning, two bathrooms, and a galley kitchen. Fleming Hall boasts hardwood floors, a large fireplace, large windows and a covered front porch and open back deck.

Meeting space accommodates 50.
Day Use – 1-25 people: $135 per day, 26+ people: $5.50 per person, per day

Oak Lodge has a large open room and full kitchen. Oak Lodge has meeting space for 50, bathrooms, wood stove, piano, heat and air conditioning. Oak Lodge also has a large private back deck overlooking woods.

Overnight capacity is 23. Meeting space accommodates 40.
Day Use – 1-25 people: $135 per day, 26+ people: $5.50 per person, per day

Dogwood Center is a multi-use building that can be rented for day-use or overnight. The building is T-shaped with a meeting room in front, a kitchen at the end, and two bathrooms and bedrooms on either side. The building has heat and air conditioning, fireplace, piano, kitchen, and meeting room.

For information on other buildings and outdoor spaces at the center: New Hope Camp and Conference Center. The center is located on 86 between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. For more pictures, see my previous post.

As I pointed out in the other post, the camp has its own tables and chairs, so that saves you a considerable expense and bother. I believe there is also a discount for church-related groups.

Of the places we considered, Camp New Hope was my preference for my daughter’s wedding next year. It is big, informal, outdoorsy but with nice indoor space, very close to where we live, and inexpensive.

I took these pictures yesterday – it’s late August so everything is kind of burnt up from the sun.

The guy who runs it is very kind and accommodating. I’ve played a number of weddings there and found the venue very pleasant.
There are two biggish cabins on site which can be rented for the weekend of your wedding, for people who don’t like to drive. The cabins have kitchens so you can settle in and have a vacation weekend!
[caption id="attachment_408" align="alignleft" width="475" caption="New Hope Camp and Conference Center dining hall"][/caption]The dining hall is large, air-conditioned, and L-shaped, so you can have one activity at one end and another at the other. Also, they have chairs and tables so you don’t have to go to the trouble and expense of renting them.Fleming Lodge, which is close by the dining hall, is smaller but nicer: it has a wood floor, I’ve done contradances there. It has a porch where people sometimes put food and/or drink.
There are several pavilions, some larger, some smaller; I’m a mentor with the Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate program in Carrboro NC and they sponsor family get-togethers at Camp New Hope, with volleyball on the grass and tons of people in the pavilion for a fried-chicken feast.

Also, having the pavilion means if it rains, or if it’s very hot, there’s shelter for you and your guests.

My daughter decided the camp was too rustic for her, but for an informal affair it would be wonderful. The next post will give prices.

When I was at the NC State Fairgrounds in Raleigh today, to go to the Bridal Show, there was a fleamarket in full gear. I went by this store which rents tents, tables, chairs, linens, stages, dance floors, “and more.”

I thought I’d go see what was up and report back to you. However, there was a little sign in the window that said, “Inquire next door at the bike shop.”

The bike shop next door was not a nice yuppy bicycle store, it was a motorcycle place full of burly Hells Angels types. I was quite intimidated and walked right by.

Wedding rentals and bikers: this is not what I would call synergy.

If you want to look it up, it’s tentandevents.com (according to the sign).

On my way to the Bridal Show, held today at the Jim Graham Building at the NC State Fairgrounds, I happened across the weekly Raleigh Flea-market. It’s huge! And when I saw these $15 tuxedos I couldn’t resist.

Long ago I went to a restaurant-supply store in Boston, bought four different size pans (the huge one, the big one, the medium size one, and the baby one) and baked my own wedding cake.

They told me the layers are so heavy you have to put pieces of corrugated cardboard between the layers and support the cardboard with little pieces of dowels. Well, that was easy enough – however, after I iced it I sadly realized the cake was not perfectly level.

On the “day of,” my dad, who was an engineer, looked at it with displeasure, said “you need some shims,” and proceeded to square it up. Or so I thought he had, but when I dug up the picture, I saw the re-engineering had actually not been successful. Luckily the cake (which was chocolate with fresh cherries and kirsch) was delicious.

These days, if this happened you could just say you did it that way on purpose!

UPDATE: I am writing about my bake your own cake experience.

I noticed there were a goodly number of vases for sale today at Goodwill Industries so I picked up a dozen for my daughter’s wedding.

I’ve got a year to find some that please her more, or that are more identical, if that’s what she wants – at $1 each I can replace them with a clear conscience. She’s planning to buy her flowers from one of the vendors at the Carrboro Farmers Market.

My daughter is interested in buying locally for her wedding, and so she sent me to the Carrboro Farmers’ Market to look for flower growers and vendors who sell by the bucket. The first I talked to was Cathy Jones of Perry-winkle Farm. She was friendly and confident. Her variety of flowers was the most extensive.

See her website and farm at her Cooperative Extension Service website

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The next batch of flowers were available at the Wild Hare Farm booth …


Leah Cook is the owner.

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“Haygroves are multi-bay tunnels that the Hitts use to grow high quality crops like heirloom tomatoes and cut flowers. The tunnels protect crops from the rain and allow the Hitts to control the amount of moisture going to the crops.” (From the Hitt Farm site at NCSU Cooperative Extension Service.)


You can email her: abhitt (at) bellsouth.net

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The fourth and last flower vendor selling by the bucket was Ken Dawson of Maple Spring Gardens.

In general, it’s great to go see the vendors in action on Sunday mornings, 9-12 (here’s the Carrboro Farmers Market website to check for updated information). There are a few small parking lots on Weaver Street approaching the market, so you don’t need to park a mile away and hike like I did.

However, you can’t have much of a conversation there because they’re very busy! If you know you want local flowers for your wedding, call them at a more peaceful time and they can tell you what can be available at your wedding date. Ken said when his daughter told him she was getting married, he knew a year in advance and planted huge drifts of “her” flowers around where the wedding was going to take place. Sigh.

My daughter is approaching the wedding dress challenge from all directions. She is checking out thrift stores (remember, I just saw TEN wedding dresses in the Goodwill near here!)…

She’s talking with a local seamstress… and she’s trying her hand at sewing, too. I sent her a halter-top pattern I’ve been saving for thirty years and she sewed a prototype she likes quite a bit.

Then yesterday I got this email from her:

Oops, I just bought a dress on ebay. It just happened – perhaps we might say, se me compro el vestido? (“The dress bought itself to me.”) … I am going to be a 12-dress bride if I am not careful.

Cost of this find, “MES AMI Stunning White Beaded Lace Gown” ? $24.99.

Actually, I first saw these paddle fans when I went down to Alabama for the first annual national Sacred Harp Singing Convention, probably in 1979. Some friends and I hopped in a VW beetle and rolled down from Boston! It was the first time I’d ever seen a cotton field! It was the first time I experienced Chick-Fil-E! Or barbeque of an entire animal!

We visited some small non-airconditioned churches (in fact some did not have indoor plumbing, they had instead a “Men’s Trail” and a “Lady’s Trail”). Many of the parishioners were vigorously operating personal fans with Jesus on them. (Some had ads for funeral homes on them, savvy advertising considering the average age of those in attendance.)

I’d never seen such a thing but I certainly wished *I* had one too…

So I was pretty thrilled when we showed up to play at a wedding way out in the country, in a tent out under the blistering June sun, and were handed these! Of course, you can’t hold a fan and play the fiddle at the same time, but I liked this wedding souvenir so much I’ve kept it for nine years.

I wonder if they were hand-made? They are laminated, very stiff cardboard, with the paddle glued on the back (that’s better than staples for sure).

There are many sources on line, here are some examples (I haven’t dealt with them, so not recommendations):
Inkhead.com
U.S. Imprints.com
Hand Fan Factory
Hand Fans Direct

Some will do a minimum as low as 130. Some will do full-color as part of the base price, but at some places you pay extra set-up etc. for each separate color (these places are obviously using real printing presses rather than ink-jet printers). Watch out for the weight of the stock – I would say 16 point is a minimum and more is better.

The fan I pictured here is laminated. I’m not sure who does that. Anyway, I’ve seen these fans at a few more weddings and think they’re a great idea.

Since I said Torero’s (see below) is on the gringo-friendly end of the spectrum of Mexican restaurants in the Triangle, I thought I’d put in a word for my current favorite on the other end – Super Taqueria on Roxboro Road.

I learned about it from a great local food blog, Carpe Durham. From their post about Super Taqueria:

Super Taqueria on Roxboro has everything one could ask for in a taqueria: salsa bar, licuado station, special weekend soups and ceviche, and a big screen TV playing Univision. The decor is also especially upscale when compared to Durham’s other taquerias, sporting a nice paint job and prints of vaguely Florentine landscapes.

We especially loved the gorditas de pollo. If you are rolling your eyes now, that is understandable; many taquerias fill their tacos and gorditas de pollo with limp chicken in a boring sauce. Not Super Taqueria; they cook little chopped bits of chicken on a grill so that they are caramelized and flavorful. Their gordita shells are also perfect–crispy on the very edges, chewy a little farther in, doughy in the very middle, and not greasy at all.

The people are friendly, there are wonderful salad things on the salsa bar, it’s inexpensive, and the steak in the tacos de asado is fabulously good. I don’t know if they cater but if they did, I’d press my daughter to choose them.

First off, I’m not a fan of cut flowers in general. They’re expensive and ephemeral.

Ephemeral, that’s the part that gets me – cut flowers start out beautiful and then wither and rot while you wrestle with your distress about throwing them out. And it makes you think about life and death, and then, what a waste it was to cut them when they were so pretty in the field etc…

I get it about beautiful wedding bouquets – they’re pretty and worth it, and I won’t try to convince my daughter to carry sticks or balloons down the aisle instead. But what’s with giant floral arrangements on the tables at the reception? Not only is it expensive, but people want to take the vases and put them on the floor so they can see the guests across the table and talk to them!

So if they get in the way and they’re expensive, why not skip them altogether? This is how, as a young wife, I had the brainstorm that Thanksgiving dinner would be far more relaxed and enjoyable if I simply did not cook or provide foods which are traditional but which nobody likes. Bingo! Everybody stuffs themselves on the things they DO like, and happiness prevails.

I bet you could find a better use for the money you could save on all those fancy flowers you don’t have to buy.

My daughter pointed me to some cute, stylish wedding blogs this morning and one thing that caught my eye as I browsed was odd alternatives to flower arrangements for the table. I’ll probably post more of them later (when I’m trying to convince my daughter out of table flowers) but here are some ideas which perplexed me.

I called a lot more companies than this, but these are the ones who would actually talk to me. Some said they’d call me back – if they do, I’ll add them to the list. Problem calls:

• Ultimate Party (in Burlington) has an unfortunate infinite loop on the answering machine, they won’t be getting much business.

• General Rental Center in Durham has only one person who will give quotes and she is rarely in the office.
• Several seemed to be out of business, at least their phones were disconnected.

All these rental companies request as much advance notice as possible. They are often booked a year in advance; however, you can often be accommodated on much shorter notice. Spring and fall are the busy seasons. Confirm all prices!

Name of company: American Party Rental
Phone number: 919-544-1555
Showroom location: 3633 South Alston Avenue DurhamNC
5′ round tables seat 6-8: $8.00
tablecloths for above: polyester $15, dressier aruond $20
chairs: wooden folding $3 each, plastic $1.75-2.00 each
6-8 foot buffet tables: $7, $8
tablecloths for above: poly blend, $8.50
20×40 tent: $440 (800 sq feet, dining for 64 fills it completely) includes setup and delivery
delivery charge? starts at $60-75
setup/breakdown: $1 per chair, $2 per table (usually caterers do it, they say)
payment: ½ on booking, remainder
comments: they urge use of their website to build a quote. They also can supply your caterer’s needs (dishes, ovens, etc.)

Name of company: Best Rent All
Phone number: 919-286-3708 extension #2
Showroom location: 2410 Guess Road, Durham NC
5′ round tables seat 6-8: $8.50
tablecloths for above: $8.25, polyester only, but they have a few cotton ones
chairs: resin, padded seats: $3.25 each. Wooden ones are same price.
6-8 foot buffet tables: $8.00
tablecloths for above: $8.50
20×40 tent:$340 includes setup and delivery
delivery charge? $50 Durham, $75 Chapel Hill, $85 Raleigh
setup/breakdown: $1.20 per table, 35 cents per chair
payment: 50% on booking, rest due two weeks before event and is non-refundable at that point.

Name of company: General Rental Center
Phone number: 919-383-6186
Showroom location: 3512 Wortham Street, Durham NC
5′ round tables seat 6-8: $8.50
tablecloths for above: polyester $8, poly/cotton same price
chairs: white wood $3.00
6-8 foot buffet tables: $8.00
tablecloths for above: $8.00
20×40 tent: $330 includes setup and delivery
delivery charge? starts at $70
setup/breakdown: $1.50 per table, 20 cents per chair
payment: 50% at booking, rest on the day of, or preferably the day before.

Name of company: SCI party rentals
Phone number: 919-942-3500
Showroom location: 1705 Legion Road, Chapel Hill
5′ round tables seat 6-8: $10
tablecloths for above: $10 (cotton)
chairs: white resin, $3.45; brown plastic, $1.50
6-8 foot buffet tables: $10
tablecloths for above: $10
20×40 tent: $450 includes delivery and setup
delivery charge? $150 includes setup
payment: no deposit, but they hold your credit card #.

Name of company: Tent Rental Company
Phone number: 336-226-2650
Showroom location: 319 North Main Street, Burlington NC
20×40 tent: $400
delivery charge: starts at $50; $5 a one-way mile from their location in Burlington

Name of company: Party Rentals by Lisa
Phone number: 336-273-3814
Showroom location: 2643 Randleman Road, Greensboro
5′ round tables seat 6-8: $8
tablecloths for above: $9 polyester; has satin, etc. too
chairs: black plastic $1.25, white $2.00, white wood $3.50 each
6-8 foot buffet tables: $8
tablecloths for above: $9
20×40 tent: $400
delivery charge: in Greensboro, $50 includes setup/breakdown. To Chapel Hill, $100
payment: 50% on booking, the rest due 2 weeks before the event.

Name of company: Careli Rental Service
Phone number: 919-697-3238
Showroom location: Durham NC
5? round tables seat 6-8: $8.00
chairs: wooden folding $2.60 each, plastic $1.30-1.60 each
6-8 foot buffet tables: $7
tablecloths for above: $11-15
20×20 tent: $230 (notice this is half the size of the others I’ve listed) includes setup and delivery
delivery charge: at the moment, free for orders of more than $125 in Durham and Chapel Hill, $175 in Raleigh
setup/breakdown: not mentioned on website

OK, I promise I’m done now with my morning finds at Goodwill Industries. But how could you do better than this?

It occurs to me that a fun parlor game for your bridal shower would be the “Yankee Auction.” As this was explained to me (by a dear friend from Maine), it works like this:

• There are a bunch of fabulous gifts like these and the ones in the previous post, all laid out to be admired and compared.

• Everybody picks a number out of a hat.
• The person who draws number one picks their favorite present.
• Number two now has two choices: she can choose among the presents remaining on the table – OR, she can TAKE AWAY Number one’s present!
• Number three can do the same thing. And you can go around and around until…

Actually, I forget how it ends. Anybody?

I found these all in four minutes. Think what amazing things you could come up with if you dropped by the thrift shop every week or so for a few months.