As the groom, I wasn’t exactly sure what my role was supposed to be with this whole “wedding” thing. I knew a few things for sure: I loved my fiancé, I wanted to marry her, and I wanted us to have an amazing celebration with our loved ones to s...tart off our lives together. But beyond that, I was a bit clueless. Venues? Vendors? Photographers?
When my fiancé first proposed that we look at a french wedding venue in the Texas hill country, I was a bit skeptical. Sure, the pictures looked nice, but could it actually look like that in in real life? We’ll see. So we booked an appointment and went to visit it.
I was actually pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. From an aesthetics level, it was beautiful - it really did live up to the pictures we’d seen. We started to get excited. From a functional perspective, it really was well thought out - even the separate bride/groom suites with en-suite bathrooms, the separate (secret) staircase from which the bride/groom can make their grand entrance… it was impressive. But what impressed us even more was their thoughtfulness.
From the moment we met Karen (the owner), we could tell that she wanted to make the entire thing as easy as possible. After we spoke for a bit and she could tell that we were interested in her venue, she offered to give us a list of her recommended vendors and to make some intros.
Some tidbits she shared at that first meeting: “Ask this guy to be your DJ - he not only DJs and MCs, but he sings just like Sinatra!”, “Have this gal be your wedding planner. She’s fantastic!”, “Try these people to be your caterers - great quality, super reasonable pricing, and they can even design custom menus/dishes for your ceremony”, and “Have you thought of [redacted] for your wedding cake? WAY cheaper and they taste great”.
Karen also let us know about their commitment to cleanliness in the building (this was during the pandemic, after all):
- They have more than a dozen air cleaners in the building, constantly cleaning the air
- All high touch surfaces are disinfected daily, to reduce the risk of infection
- Lots of masks
- Lots of sanitizer
- Outdoor options for cocktail hour, ceremony, reception, etc. if we really needed it in addition to indoor options
Basically, when we left the meeting with Karen we were left feeling a lot more confident about the whole wedding. It felt like way less of a “this is overwhelming” situation and more of a “Holy cow, we can actually do this!” one.
Oh, and remember that vendor list she offered to share? She sent an email out that same day and we received no less than 25 different (vetted) vendors wanting to meet us! We reviewed the lists to see which ones we wanted to choose and wouldn’t you know it: We ended up picking every vendor that Karen recommended to us in the first meeting. Karen jokes that she “planned out our whole wedding for us”.
Of course, we signed with Ma Maison to reserve our special day. Ma Maison has been nothing but attentive and responsive the entire time as we’ve called/emailed/texted at least 2-3 times a month since this entire process started.
We can’t wait for our big day there!