By Courtney Danielson
While the wedding dress may be one of the most important aspects of your wedding in a personal sense, the venue is certainly the most important aspect in a logistical sense. After all, without a venue you’re just a group of people hanging out on a sidewalk.
Whether you’re dreaming of an outdoor ceremony followed by a reception on the beach or a chic reception with twinkling lights, pulsing music and a gorgeous city view, Rhode Island has more than enough options. In fact, that was one of the hardest parts of venue hunting — narrowing down the list of places I actually wanted to look. Since we’d picked a date in March, anything outdoor was out of the question, which left us with about 100 options to choose from. After doing my research (gathering pricing, looking at photos, checking out reviews from other brides online and even doing random Google searches to see if I could find photos of weddings held at each venue that didn’t make it into the pages of Engaged or the venues’ own websites) I narrowed down my list of eighteen potential wedding venues to four: Hotel Viking in Newport, and the Omni, the Renaissance and the Dorrance in Providence.
Now, I’d like to start by saying that each of the venues we saw was gorgeous, but I could only pick one (obviously). Each of them had their pros and cons, but I won’t list any cons here. After all, what may have been important to my family and me may not be something that even registers on your radar.
During my research I thought for sure that Hotel Viking was going to be the location. It has everything I was looking for in terms of the general theme of my wedding, and it has a certain historic element that not many other venues have. They’ve also got their own on-site, non-denominational church for brides who want to get married in a church without having to schlep from one location to another. The hotel underwent a renovation a few years ago and their two ballrooms are absolutely stunning as are the restaurant, foyer and guest rooms.
If you’re looking to do a Newport wedding with a bit of historic flair, without paying to rent out one of the mansions, this is a great option.
A friend of mine from high school had her wedding at the Dorrance, and after scoping out photos on Facebook, I fell in love. During our tour I was absolutely blown away by how gorgeous the venue is. Everything within the building is original, and the detail of the architecture is stunning. Honestly, you should probably just pop in there for a drink one night to check it out even if you aren’t considering it for your wedding, it’s that gorgeous. The old bank vault is also put to good use — it turns into a little hideaway for the bride and groom, so they can escape the chaos for a few moments before being introduced to their guests. (Don’t worry, there’s no chance the door will close on you while you’re in there — it weighs a few hundred pounds.)
RENAISSANCE PROVIDENCE DOWNTOWN
This is another absolutely gorgeous building located in Downtown Providence. The hotel itself is stunning, and they got bonus points for doling out glasses of champagne upon our arrival. There were two options of locations for cocktail hour within the hotel — either right outside of the ballroom or at the restaurant on-site. Since we’re planning to have more than 150 guests, the space outside the ballroom would have been a bit tight, so we got to check out the section of the restaurant they would reserve and it was awesome. It definitely had a very chic-glam vibe without being too stuffy or imposing.
This is the venue we ended up choosing!
I mentioned before that every venue had a downside but, honestly, we couldn’t find much wrong with the Omni. The hotel and its staff have an excellent reputation, it’s a gorgeous location and it’s conveniently located for all of our guests coming from out of town.
When we visited the venue in February the staff informed us that they would be undergoing a renovation this summer. Honestly, I thought the venue was perfect as is, but when I went back a couple of weeks ago to take a sneak peek at the renovations in the ballroom I was blown away. They managed to make the space look more sophisticated without taking away any of the elements that we loved about it. Also, the guest rooms within the hotel are impeccably appointed, and the room rates they gave us for our guest block were great.
Choosing an off-season date for our wedding definitely helped with our options. Pretty much every venue from Newport to Providence was available on our date, and it also meant that we got some pricing benefits that we would have lost if we had picked a peak season date.
And when it came to choosing the actual venue, it was actually kind of a no-brainer. As I said, I thought Hotel Viking would have been the destination prior to actually seeing all of the other options, but once I had seen all four of my finalists, it was pretty much gut instinct that led us to choose the Omni. Something about it just felt right.