A Trip Home

This weekend I roadtripped to my hometown, Spring, for a look-see around four different reception sites with my main squeezes - Bethany and Pamela.

It's not that I don't love Julia, but she's at school in Dayton Ohio, and much less wedding-inclined than the other two. Basically I need to point out a dress and tell her when to be at the church. All the other details along the way are incidental to her. Still, I get that she LOVES basketball, and baseball, and most sports. She was in Crew up at Dayton for awhile, and was pretty good at it from what I hear, but her new passion is that she's going to Rome this summer for a study abroad and I am jealous jealous jealous! Matt and I are trying to go to Angers, France (pronounced AHN-jay) for the Fall semester, but we won't know until March 6th if the program is going to make. We have finished our applications and are waiting to submit them to Nora in a week or two.

Back to the post at hand, Pamela, Bethany and I traveled to Spring in a separate car from David and Matt (David is Pamela's boyfriend, and his parents agreed to host the five of us - again - for the weekend. I love them so much!) and on the way stopped at Chateau Polonez for an open house. Pam ooohed and ahhhed over the bacon-wrapped shrimp and we loved the beauty of the Chateau at night. Definitely "French Elegance!"

In the morning, I had tried to get us into The Fontenot Grand Mansion, (WARNING: poor quality music at that site) but they were at a bridal show, and so we proceeded to Ashton Gardens. Their chapel is simply beautiful, but since I'm using my home parish, CGS, that doesn't really matter to me. A look around the ballroom revealed a very odd dance floor and almost a division of one side of the room from the other. Their prices were decent, but overall I thought the flow of the room left a lot to be desired.

We moved on to Northgate Country Club. I had been to a wedding reception held here for Tati & Jeff's wedding in May of 2007, but at the time I remember thinking "gee this place is 80's-tastic" and my dad wasn't too keen on the food. I thought it was alright. But Bethany insisted on giving it another shot so we did a walking tour, and boy have they revamped the place. It's beautiful now, like a mini-Petit Trianon. I can't speak to the food, but this is definitely an option.

Then we zipped over to Shirley Acres, fighting Kuykendahl traffic all the way, and found the owner, Bob Shirley, to be a delightfully nice man. He did our first itemized price quote of the day, and explained how pricing works there after a tour of the facilities. I would definately pick "The Garden Room" over "The Pavilion," since the latter inspires massive throwbacks to CGS' Beginning Retreat, but the timing doesn't quite work with the Garden Room since it isn't available until 6:30 at the earliest, and Mass will probably end around 4pm. Hmm... I talked to dad about it and though we agreed that The Lodge, located next door, had awesome food and great pricing was to be had at Shirley Acres, he said he didn't want to see me go for the lowest price and that I should go with what feels right. Well, Shirley Acres just doesn't seem like the elegant touch I want, so I suppose not.

After that, we went and got Pamela a haircut at the always wonderful Texas Hair Team with a girl that Bethany trusts, and then we splurged on pedicures for each of us. Overall it was a good time - though I think there will be problems if we have another "wedding-intense" weekend like this anytime soon. Overall, good stuff was found.