Cedar Knoll is an amazing venue to have a wedding. We started out our venue search by looking for the typical, big room, lots of seating capacity, dance floor, catering, etc. Howev...er, we really wanted something special and not cookie-cutter, something unique and a place to remember. We live in Alexandria and frequently bike along the Mount Vernon Trail and always rode by Cedar Knoll. When we first walked into the restaurant, the entire staff greeted us and we met up with Jessica the events manager. She instantly raved about how good their food is compared to other venues (I tend to think the typical wedding food is well.. pre-made re-heated, nothing to get excited about). Well, their food is truly amazing.
We decided to go with Cedar Knoll because of the price, the food, the location, the uniqueness, the beauty, and the history. When you go through and walk around the restaurant, each room has its own theme. At first, you might worry about how can I fit 100 people in one room (we had 109) forget about tradition; spread your guests throughout the restaurant. We were afraid people might get offended by not being seated near the bride and groom but they did not seem to mind it. We decided to have our food served family style. This forced everyone to have to chat with each other and made it feel like a good old Thanksgiving dinner.
Before we had our food tasting, we printed out our invitations with a cow and a fish because that’s the traditional food choice. Towards the end of our tasting Andrew (head chef) brought out the last entre (they use all different size and styles of neat plates). He served us a pork tenderloin with sweat potato and pineapple hash served on top. At first bite, I looked over to my wife and said, “ah crap”. Not because it didn’t taste good, but because I knew this had to be included. The problem was that we had already sent out our invitations with a cow and a fish as the options. This tasted so good we decided we had to have it included and scrapped the steak. Our guests certainly enjoyed this decision! I wanted to include this experience to try and hopefully paint a picture into how good the food was at our wedding.
We had an outdoor ceremony on the front lawn which was beautifully setup with the big oak tree as our back drop. Yes, because of its proximity to GW parkway you could hear the cars from the road, however you ignore them as soon as the ceremony starts. The ceremony went off without a hitch and cocktail hour was excellent. Jessica kept bringing us food to ensure we would not miss out while we were having our pictures taken. I’ve been to several weddings where the bride and groom missed out entirely on their cocktail hour. For the reception, our guests were spread out and we had three tables setup in the grand room so we could have a dance floor. Sure, the dance floor isn’t the largest however, I believe that it was a good thing. It makes it seem less awkward when you only have 10 people dancing. Everything went off without a hitch during the night and the staff, Jessica, and Andrew all did a wonderful job. They allowed for us to leave our stuff overnight so we did not have to worry about cleaning up. When we came back to pick everything up we saw a lot of the same staff from the night before. They all congratulated us again and talked about how wonderful the night was. After using Cedar Knoll for our venue, it's apparent they are like a small family, one that I am happy to have married into!