ducksandbooks

My aunt and uncle are members of River Bend Golf and Country Club in Great Falls, Virginia. It is about 15 to 20 minutes from my parents house, and about 10 from Great Falls National Park.

They’re redecorating it next winter. Sadly, it is too small for our needs. Only 90 people for the ceremony if it needs to be held inside. Very affordable though, but also very do-it-yourself. There really wasn’t a planner, just a site coordinator.

the outside, front entrance

the pretty foyer, looking back towards the welcome desk

there’s a piano in there!

the “rotunda” area, the corner of the L-shaped room we would have the small leg and corner of (the larger leg is the club’s main dining area and can’t be rented out)

While I’m home in DC I tried to meet up with a few of my girlfriends. Especially Whitney (WAJR), she and I are birthday twins (though I’m a year and a few hours earlier). We went out for a wander in Old Town yesterday (Friday). We looked at sample dresses at Gossypia, ate falafel, looked at cookware, saw Michelle Obama’s dress at Talbots, sadly it didn’t fit either of us and was a little outside both of our budgets.

WAJR and Andrew married this past August in Staunton, Virginia, Andrew’s home town. Here are a few photos from their wedding ceremony, reception, and hanging out in hotel rooms afterward:

pretty flowers (while looking for my purse after the reception)

“after party” with some HS people and their SOs

then going to play Apples to Apples with Maria, and WAJR and Roo’s UVA buddies

Will and Will

Our number one venue in Washington, DC is Sequoia, in Georgetown. It is apparently named after the presidential yacht, not the tree. Though the yacht might be named after the tree… Anyway, here are the photos. It is SO pretty. Here’s a review showing what it looks like in the winter: review.

It’s super pretty. You can see the Kennedy Center looking down the river, and you can sorta see Georgetown looking up (or just the Key Bridge)[sorry, no photos of that view]. Across the Potomac is Roosevelt Island, a National Park. Here are my pictures:

^ yes, that IS the Kennedy Center

Oh yeah, we can rent the WHOLE patio for ourselves!

Logistically, it’ll be very interesting. There’s no rental fee, if we meet the minimum (no problem), but there is an extra fee to rent out the patio. If we don’t rent out the patio, re risk gawkers being seated out there, and that would be lame. Also, because the bow of the restaurant (there’s a mild nautical them) sticks out over the promenade, and can get some really harsh sunlight, the event coordinator strongly suggests that we draw the curtains during the ceremony (and try and time it between security fly-overs along the river, where helicopters like to skim the Potomac while playing leapfrog with each other).

There’s also a really plush private room off the main restaurant that would still be open to the public, it seats 40 in big leather chairs and sorta looks over where we would put the dance floor. For lunch, the coordinator says that she doubts anyone will want to sit there and that we’d  have the main restaurant, bar, and upper patio (the lower patio can’t be rented at all, but it’s really a bar/grill and much less fancy-shmancy) all to ourselves!