Jackpot!

I fell for our reception venue, the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, pretty much as soon as I walked in. The funny thing is, though, that I almost didn't go visit it at all! When I was touring wedding venues with my mom, my sister, and Mr. O, we popped into the museum on a whim because we had a few free minutes, and ended up loving it. It wasn't on the original "To Tour" list because when I was first searching for reception venues, the museum had almost no visibility. I was only aware that they hosted events at all because references to it popped up occasionally in various forums I was searching.

Once we booked our reception at the Children's Museum, I sometimes felt a little frustrated, because as much as I loved the space, I could find virtually no photos of it set up for a wedding reception. If you go back and check out my posts on our venue, you'll notice that the only photos of our reception space are random, crappy shots I pulled from various Flickr streams here and there, and there's absolutely nothing that might give you an idea of how the site looks when prepared for an event.

Well, no longer! I've been getting the impression that the Children's Museum is trying to increase its popularity as a reception venue--it's now listed on The Knot (it wasn't there when I was looking), it offers a larger variety of catering options, and now, glory glory, the event coordinator told me there's a gallery of event photos on their website! Want to finally see some good pictures of where we'll be celebrating? (All photos from here.)

Our cocktail hour will be in the museum lobby, like you can see in this wedding:







Then, our reception will take place in the Great Hall. Here are some events that used the more traditional round table set-up...













...while this event used a less traditional mixture of round and long rectangular tables, and put some lounge seating at the end of the room (which is long and skinny).





Looking at these photos gets me all excited over our venue all over again. I love that funny light-up stork in the lobby, the marble walls, the huge high ceilings, the giant white balloons.....the whole thing, basically. YAY! WE'RE HAVING A GIANT PARTY IN HERE!

I don't know yet how we'll be setting up the room, but I will soon! I'm blogging to you right now from Logan Airport, where my flight to Pittsburgh is delayed by an hour or so (bless your free wifi and general awesomeness, Logan Airport). Unbelievably, this is my last trip to my beloved 'Burgh before our wedding, and it's action-packed: hair trial, finalizing the flower plan, dress fitting, logistics meeting to plan the reception layout and schedule and pick the table linens, menu tasting, rehearsal dinner planning.....you're going to be hearing a lot from me next week, basically.

It's starting to feel very real now! Our invitations are in the mail and I am a liiiiittle giddy about the prospect of beginning to receive our RSVPs back. People are saying things like, "it's getting so close now!" rather than, "oh, you've got some time." I'm making day-of timelines and picking linens and tasting our dinner menu! The days when I was aimlessly prowling around the Internet coming up with crazy ideas ("Mindy Weiss suggests having a 'breakfast box' delivered to each guest's hotel room the morning after the wedding! I'm totally going to do that!") and downloading every pretty picture I saw seem very far away now. There's a real wedding in the works here!

September brides, what are you working on? Are you hanging in there?