Our latest installment from the lovely Kate Arends on planning her Minneapolis wedding—all style & smarts! Read on for Kate’s search to find just the right venue!

If you were to walk into our apartment, you would find the following: A mix of antique and modern furniture. A bouquet of seasonal white flowers in my favorite blue mason jar. Graphic art on the walls. Tea light candles. A 1950s record player floating Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” through the air. All of that, plus a really cute guy, sitting on the couch, reading a book. Does our home have a definitive style? No, not that I can pinpoint. And I kinda like it that way.

What does our apartment have to do with wedding planning? Well, for us, planning our wedding is less about following a prescribed theme and more about creating an event that feels undoubtedly “us.” The little details you find in our home reflect many of the things we hold near and dear to our hearts. These little touches have made their way into our wedding plans as a way of making sure our personalities don’t get lost in the “weddingy” aspects of the planning process.

So when we started to look for a reception venue, I had my heart set on finding something that fit our lifestyle…only a much cooler, posh version. I was looking for a mish-mash of traditional-meets-modern interiors, something that was funky but still elegant. Much like the Ace Hotel in Portland or the Viceroy of Palm Springs. I also liked the idea of using a warehouse space for an industrial/modern feeling. Some images that inspired my search:

Sources (clockwise, from left to right): Decor8, The Ace Hotel, Viceroy Hotel, design*sponge: tyler doran.

I soon fell in love with a space in downtown Minneapolis that I now call ‘the one that got away.’ Modern, industrial and effortlessly elegant all at the same time: The Mill City Museum. The space was perfect and Nick thought so too. As we asked questions about booking the space, it became more complicated than we had hoped though. Cost and catering guidelines just weren’t going to work with what we had imagined and to hold the wedding at Mill City we would have to scale back significantly on some of the things that mattered most to the two of us. So much for the “effortless” part of elegance we had imagined! My heart broke a little—such a beautiful venue!—but we had to move on. Nevertheless, isn’t ‘the one that got away’ an amazing place?

Next step, we thought we had better look high and low for other options. After viewing what seemed like every possible venue—an art museum, an old train depot, a rose garden, a boutique hotel, a historic mansion and an outdoor pavilion—we were stumped. Nothing fit perfectly. What to do?

The crossroads—we’ve all been there! More from Kate on how she & Nick solved this dilemma in a bit…!

Tags: home goods, home style, minnesota wedding, museum wedding, wedding inspiration