Searching for a Venue

For those of you who know me very well you know I love to plan events! I plan many for work as well as for my personal life. So getting to plan a wedding, oh wow, I am so excited. Chris made me promise him that I wouldn't start right away. This was very difficult for me since I am such a planner and want to figure out what I want to do as soon as possible!

I think I started calling hotels three weeks after we got engaged! In one day, I set up appointments for five different hotels. They were all within the Galleria/Downtown part of town.
The first one I looked at was with Chris and that was the Doubletree Downtown. The next set of appointments happened on a Friday that I took off from work. I made Rachel, Kimberly and Ginger all go with me since Chris was at work. We started off at the JW Mariott Galleria. That was a gorgeous hotel, but I wasn't too pleased with the customer service there (sorry Nihaal's friend who works there!). Following that was the Sheraton Galleria. Now, I really did like this space. Lynette, the events coordinator was so helpful and wonderful to work with and I was really thinking this would be the place. After that we made our way to the Hilton Post Oak. Again, beautiful space, but it just wasn't what I wanted. Finally that day I went (by myself) to the Hyatt Downtown. That hotel was just too big!

The Sheraton and Doubletree were my top choices out of the 5 I visited. I took Chris back to the Sheraton and my aunt too and it seemed like that was where we were going to have the reception. I did have one more hotel that I wanted to look at. On August 14, 2009, Chris and I took a day off to go look at this last hotel, the Omni Westside. We went to the site and looked around and met with the event coordinator. The coordinator, Chantel, is wonderful and the hotel itself is simply beautiful. I could envision my wedding reception happening there. The only downfall is that it is a little further out of town than I wanted it to be, but I-10 isn't that bad anymore (not compared to 290) and I grew up near that area, not the Galleria or Downtown!

Well, we signed the contract and put down a deposit on September 30, 2009. The date that I wanted was mine at the location I wanted it at. That was a fun to do to cross off of my massive wedding planning list!

***Just a note, the wedding will not be taking place at the hotel. Also, we will have a discounted room rate available for guests the weekend of the wedding at this hotel. I will post the information once I have it!