Saved By the Wedding Planner: Finding Banquet Halls in Chicago Suburbs

I hate to say this about my engagement, but little did I know of the nightmare my husband and I would experience when we were trying to find wedding venues in Chicago’s West Loop. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the engagement itself was terrible – actually, the proposal was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen …this big giant police officer dude that has put gangsters behind bars couldn’t even put two words together when he was on his knee! Made me feel like one heck of a lady! Ok, where was I? Ah…

Kraig and I set out to try and track down wedding venues in Chicago, but more specifically, around the West Loop area, since that’s basically where both of our families live. It would have just made things incredibly convenient. However, ‘convenience’ was probably the last thing we experienced.

You see, there’s this thing about waiting too long to plan the details of a wedding. It’s a proportionate principle: the more time you have, the more money you save, and the easier it is to plan; the less time you have, the more money you spend, and the harder it is to plan. Unfortunately, Kraig and I ended up closer to the latter. Procrastinators always seem to find each other and fall in love, it’s just the nature of things.

Just Be Done With It, Get a Planner

We searched high and low, but after doing more and more research – 3 months is nowhere near enough time to plan a wedding and get things rolling (unless we decided to head to Vegas). Seriously, 3 months is all we had… because I was off to Iraq in December, and we wanted to get hitched before then. It might be a cute story for the Lifetime Channel, but extremely frustrating to experience yourself.

That said, I just decided to get a consultation with a wedding planner. I was stuck, I didn’t know what to do, wedding venues were filled to the brim, and we weren’t getting anywhere (honestly, how do we even send out wedding invitations without knowing where we were going?)

After meeting with Ashley, my wedding planner, it became clear to me that this was probably the best decision I could have made (again, unless we were going to go to Vegas, which was becoming a viable option at that point). With her knowledge of the business, it made everything go smoothly after that.

Free and Easy

Once Ashley set out to do what she does best, all I really had to do was concentrate on the fun parts, like picking out my dress, sampling food, picking out tuxes, sampling food, picking out flowers, sampling wine …and sampling food, which was actually way more fun than it should’ve been.

It wasn’t long before she was able to track down this amazing place on the edge of the suburbs, not quite in the intended area, but close enough. Besides, this wedding venue was absolutely gorgeous, pristine, classy, and not all that pricey …and guess how she found it? Lucky for me, she’s got insane connections, the venue called her when they had a cancellation.

When all was said and done, we had a storybook wedding, and we were able to get everything planned out in 3 months. I feel like a smart girl for hiring Ashley, but one lucky girl for marrying Kraig. You should have seen him shaking at the altar! Cute!