Weddings in North Carolina

I went to a party in Greensboro today and met a woman whose daughter married at the Carolina Club a couple of years ago. The Carolina Club is on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, near the Bell Tower. This lady told me that graduates of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can use the Carolina Club for functions, and the space is free – but you must use their food, drink, and service.

Her daughter’s wedding was for approximately 120 people, and they ended up paying the Carolina Club – for catering, service, and drinks – something in the neighborhood of $15,000. (Not including cake, see next paragraph.)

Mother of the bride: “They let us bring in a cake from the outside, but I had a friend who wanted to donate some wine and the Carolina Club would not allow it.”

I have done quite a few functions at the Carolina Club, including weddings. The approach is nice. Parking is not great but adequate. This would not be a difficult location for somebody in a wheelchair, because you can drive up near the lobby and I am pretty sure everything is on one level.

The lobby is impressive, the setup is high-class. As for the space – there is a big stage at one end of the room typically used, you can get an 8-piece ensemble up there, and the room is large enough that it can be partitioned. There is a nice back patio so people can wander in and out at will.

While I’m reporting, this MOB spent $2,000 on her daughter’s wedding dress and $5,000 on a photographer.

I hate being jerked around by vendors, and there’s a lot of that going around. I was a typesetter for years so my daughter asked me to help her with her wedding invitations (and maybe “save the date” cards).

A cheap, reliable printer I use is 123 Print.com.

Here is their price chart. Currently (April 2009) the cost for 100 wedding invitations is $36.95-42.95 (depending on the type of paper) plus $9.97 shipping/handling. That includes printing on the front and inside, and also matching envelopes.

As you’ll see from the price chart, there are other options, like postcards or flat cards.

They sometimes have coupons on line – you can search for them.

Here are some of their folded wedding invitation blanks:

first page of wedding invitation and announcement samples

second page of wedding invitation and announcement samples

For people who like to DIY … at their site you’ll see you can choose your text for the front and inside of the wedding invitation, and then choose font, etc.

For brides and grooms who are overwhelmed with all the other details and want some help… Sometimes there are just too many choices. For instance, there are hundreds of printers and middlemen on the web eager for your wedding and bridal shower and thank you card invitations order. Some are very fancy. Most are pretty expensive (I personally think 123 Print is about the most affordable.)

Just now I looked at their formatting alternatives and they’re perfectly nice. However, there are zillions of cool typefaces on the web including wedding scripts much nicer than those offered by 123Print.

Since I was a professional typesetter, naturally I love beautiful typefaces! So, as an experiment, I am offering to do this for you for $5 (Paypal):

Send your text to me, choose a typeface, and I’ll format the card and send you a .jpg file with the simplest possible instructions on how to upload it. They’ll do the rest.

You can choose one of their blanks, or if you’re tired of choosing, just use this very simple one:

It must be obvious that if I’m only charging $5 I’m not doing it for the money. I’m curious to see if there’s a need for this kind of help – and I wonder if anybody is reading this blog! Email me if you’re interested.

The Inn at Celebrity Dairy (I used to think its name was the Celebrity Goat Farm) has some real advantages. It’s a lovely spot, and the food is fabulous. (I didn’t take the pictures in this post, I found them.)

The people who run the place are friend, intelligent, and accommodating.

I wrote about the place in 2005 after we did a wedding there:

We did a unexpectedly lovely wedding at the Celebrity Goat Farm in Pittsboro (to your right, an actual Celebrity Goatlet, picture by Gerry). They didn’t tell us whether this was a celebrity farm for ordinary goats, or an ordinary farm for celebrity goats.

Anyway, I would direct you to their website, but they don’t have one. [Now they do: The Inn at Celebrity Dairy.] They sell great (and very expensive) goat cheese and also hats that say “Celebrity Goat Farm” and you would be the only one on your block to own one.

The Inn at the Celebrity Dairy

The guy that owns the farm and the 60 goats has a nice B&B there (except there’s that smell of 60 goats) and is a GREAT cook and puts on weddings.

We mostly do non-mainstream weddings, specializing in “More-or-less Traditional Music from the Northern Hemisphere and the Previous Millennium” as we do. (When we started it was the Current Millennium, but then Y2K happened and we had to order new business cards.) That means if somebody Scottish is marrying somebody Jewish, they can Google “Scottish Jewish Wedding” and our band will pop up on the screen.

So this was a Polish Russian wedding but they wanted medieval music for the prelude. Just our kind of gig. When we got there the bride and groom were sweeping the floor and setting up chairs but they soon disappeared and changed into their lovely garb. They had made their own outfits, sort of SCA-esque with flowing sleeves and wreaths, and the bridegroom had sewn himself a green velour Russian sort of tunic. It was a Unitarian Universalist ceremony, candles and stuff. A Unitarian minister once told me Unitarians don’t consider themselves Christians since they don’t believe in God, I hadn’t known that.

Afterwards we played oboreks and mazurkas and waltzes and everybody danced, young and old, mostly dances they were making up on the spot, and the food was absolutely wonderful. For once, instead of lurking in the back we sat at the banquet table with the bride and groom and their parents and got treated like royalty. At a goat farm. Isn’t life good?

A possible disadvantage is revealed in this quote from their publicity: “Just a few steps from the Inn you’ll find the ‘Goat Hilton’ – home to the Celebrity Goat Dairy herd of 100 Alpine and Saanen goats.” Depending on the wind…

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.

Depending on how macabre a sense of humor your friends have, they may enjoy the trinkets that can be found at Goodwill Industries and other junk (uh, antique) stores. Take this for instance.

Or this. What is it, do you suppose? Don’t you think it would be appreciated by some of your more ironic friends fully as much as those stupid wedding favors and bridal shower gifts people usually give?

What a great morning for finding wedding necessities! On my way back from the auto mechanic in Mebane, I stopped first at the Burwell School to take the pictures in the previous post, and then I stopped at the Goodwill.

I buy most of my clothes at the Goodwill and the PTA Thrift Store; certainly that’s where my nicest ones come from. Now that I will be a “mother of the bride,” I’ll start looking for “nice” dresses. I found one for me today (it cost $4.90) but then I saw this! It is on sale for $45 and is completely clean and perfect. The bustle was hung up in a bag to keep it clean.

I saw two other wedding dresses there. Very cost effective! It occurs to me that, seeing as how it takes months for a bridal shop to do alterations on a dress you purchase from them, those months could be better spent dropping in to the consignment store or thrift shop occasionally. You’ll eventually find something fantastic.

My daughter was interested in getting married at the Burwell School, which is a historic site in Hillsborough. On my way back from the car mechanic this morning I took these pictures. Advantages: a big, beautiful sweeping lawn and a lovely historic house to serve as backdrop to an outdoor wedding. There is also an older building (perhaps the original school?) behind the main house.

Well, obviously the place looks fabulous on the outside. The inside would be fine for a small, intimate wedding, and the dark wood floors are quite nice (though the space is, in fact, pretty dark altogether). However, if you have a lot of people it gets cramped quite quickly.

The large gracious front porch helps. We wedding musicians have often been set up on the porch, along with food vendors and drinks tables. Be sure not to set people up in front of the door, because then they’ll get trampled when guests want to use the bathroom.

Festival tents are usually set up at the bottom of the front lawn, which is pretty steep. (There is another smallish flat area to the left of the house which is sometimes set up for wedding ceremonies.) A problem is that the traffic is quite close.

I have done festivals and weddings here. During festivals, the small back building is used as a “green room” for the musicians to store their instruments, and for vendors to keep additional coolers and supplies. During weddings, it has been used as a changing room or a chill-out space for the bride, groom, and friends. The bridal party often needs to relax away from the guests.

The Burwell School has a very small parking area, enough for a couple of vendors and perhaps three other cars at most. Otherwise, parking is on the street. You should be aware of this if you have any disabled guests.

Long ago, I made my own wedding dress and I think it was beautiful and it was very inexpensive. I never wore it again so, since I’m a frugal person, I’m glad the wedding material was not too expensive and the labor costs were nil. However, others have more luxurious notions. This one, too, was sent to me by my daughter the bride-to-be. Her IM discussion about it with a long-time friend is below.

Daughter:	“This is my new concept for wedding dress:”
Friend:	“Honestly, I don’t hate it, aside from the weird loin cloth/ exposed leg thing. which i guess is more than half of the dress… “What if you just bought lace and satin in bulk, and wait til day of to wrap it around yourself? It’s like a surprise! and everyone loves surprises at weddings.”
Daughter:	“Sounds great. “Gladiator mummy” is a very original wedding theme. What kind of centerpieces would go with it, do you think?”
Friend:	“The heads of slaves who died in battle. Or, would that be too red… ?”
Daughter:	“No, I think that’s good. We could also get a really big cake and have mummies jump out of it and engage the guests in battle. Seems like a good way to keep people awake and alert during the reception, since those can otherwise get tedious.”

I honestly didn’t think I’d be writing about things like this, but my daughter is funny and I thought her happy viewpoint might entertain some other marrying couples. Back to the regular broadcast soon!

If you think I shouldn’t be posting things like this, please leave a comment! However, I think all of us (me included, as mother of the bride) need to take things less seriously. Enjoying your wedding day is the most important thing. I’ve seen some brides make themselves, their grooms, their bridesmaids and friends, and above all THEIR MOTHERS (ahem) and their FIANCES’ MOTHERS miserable!

Am I crazy or is this a problem? Both my mother and I agree that her wearing red as mother of the groom is crazy but am I overreacting?

Being tense and picky is more likely to wreck your wedding than the color of the dress your MIL (mother-in-law’s dress in bride slang) wears. Relax!

well, ok, she was just kidding, but she asked me: “Am I the doctor, or is my fiance?” (click for larger view)

Since my daughter is getting married, and I’m a NC wedding musician, I thought I’d start boning up on the current state of wedding planning and publications. I’ve looked at quite a few books and so far the best is “Bridal Bargains” by Denise and Alan Fields. (I am not connected to them in any way.) They have an excellent no-nonsense approach to the bridal industry and lots of good ideas presented in a way that is not too frou-frou for even a groom to read! And lots of ideas about economical weddings and staying on budget using unusual approaches.

There’s one passage that made me groan, though:

Every major metropolitan area has a plethora of good wedding entertainers. The only problem is finding them. Ceremony musicians, reception bands and DJs typically keep a very low profile, choosing to work by word-of-mouth referral. Many of the most successful bands don’t advertise their services. So how can you find these people?

Sound of teeth loudly gnashing. They think we don’t want to be found? Not the case at all.

• Advertising is expensive, and most musicians don’t have the money to spare.

• Advertising takes time and expertise, and many wonderful musicians are very busy – and not so good at writing copy or finding economical places to place ads. Those who offer to build websites for musicians can be predatory, taking advantage of people who are pretty inexperienced online, and the costs are often too high.
• The online world, as found in web searches, is over-run by “directory sites” which claim to offer local services but which, at least in an area like the Triangle (that’s where I live, it’s Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, and Raleigh in NC), are often very empty and unhelpful. “Real” musicians can’t get the rankings to compete with the big paid sites like “The Knot.”

OK, I’m off my soap-box now. I am trying to find out if Google can be moved to try harder to watch out for the little guy, because that’s who you want for your wedding – not offers from some big slick cover band from New York or New Jersey to come down and do your wedding as long as you pay thousands in travel costs. You want somebody nearby, who would love to make music for you.

My daughter found these for me.

I was just updating mp3 samples on the Pratie Head website, and came across this one, which I’d forgotten about:

Blue Moon

It was a challenge to do a pop American standard on bouzouki and concertina, but lots of fun.

I know these things change every day… but on April 20, when I put in a Google search for “wedding music in North Carolina,” the very first result was an advertising link aggregator that does not happen to list even one single wedding music vendor in North Carolina! I wrote to them and pointed this out; they said North Carolina is a new area for them, and wouldn’t I like to buy some advertising?

Don’t you wonder, though, how it is that they got to the top of this search, if they have no relevant content at all? They must know some fine tricks.

I’ve played a few weddings there and I was absolutely blown away by the food. The buildings and the farm fields are lovely, too. It’s gotten very good reviews from online brides. My favorite wedding there was a Polish/Russian/Celtic/Renaissance affair – the bride and groom had sewn their own sort of medieval costumes and danced like crazy.

Olga samar
olga_samar@yahoo.com
(919) 462-9472

1802 West Main St. , Durham, NC 27705

Tel: (919)286-1987

Housed in what used to be a gas station,  sharing a parking lot with Whole Foods, Ben & Jerry’s, and a bunch of other nice shops, the Mad Hatter is the place where my ex-husband bought his wedding cake when he remarried. Have a look at their classic cake descriptions.

I’m a long-time player and singer for wedding ceremonies and receptions, based in the Triangle area in the North Carolina Piedmont.

I recently noticed – actually, because my daughter is getting married and is looking for a band – that Google listings of supposedly local musicians now are swamped by large national agents who actually list very few of us. If you search for “Celtic Wedding Music in NC,” you will find listings from bands in Minnesota – willing to fly to Pittsboro, for example, as long as you pay them many thousands of dollars!

I know a lot of fabulous players around here, wonderful experienced musicians who play for very reasonable fees and are easy to work with. I’d like to feature them in my new website, Wedding Music in North Carolina.

And while I’m at it, I hope to review and feature other local vendors I’ve appreciated through my years of playing at weddings. I’ve admired, and sampled, some mighty fine cakes, and have tasted some exceptional food. I’d like to share that with you!</p> <p>And even more, I’d like to hear what your experience has been. Have you worked with florists, jewelers, dressmakers, etc. who you’ve really liked – or who you think other marrying couples should avoid? Please let me know! More to come soon.