Nashville Wedding Location

The Hermitage Hotel located in downtown Nashville is a 5-star hotel and location of many beautiful weddings. Before telling you more about the hotel, let me tell you about a recent "unusual" wedding I was part of there recently. Actually, it was a pretend wedding set up to spring a happy surprise on a local florist.

Have you heard of the show on TLC called What Not to Wear? Well, they came to Nashville to do one of their programs. And since this was local wedding florist, it was the perfect set up to get her in on a wedding which was really no wedding at all.

Carnton Plantation is popular wedding location for Nashville couples located outside of Franklin, Tennessee. I have officiated several weddings there and you can see here a picture of one under the 150 year old Osage orange tree to one side of the Carnton Mansion.

The tree is located next to an acre garden that guests can stroll through before or after the ceremony. The garden has some unusual and beautiful sculpted plants. I see that couples often have a large white tent set up nearby for the reception or a place for the ceremony in case of rain.

The mansion itself was built in 1826 and was home of the McGavock family. A special treat for your guests is that they are lead on tour (for add on fee) inside the home after the ceremony as the reception is being prepared. I found the Civil War era medical instruments displayed particularly interesting (and gruesome!).

This month I officiated a wedding at the Opryland Hotel in the Magnolia Ballroom. This is a more private wedding site within the hotel than some of the other spots where couples have their ceremony.

The ballroom itself is very impressive with a beautiful chandelier. There were about 240 wedding guests at the ceremony and that was about the right number for the size room.

As we moved on into the reception area I was even more impressed with the set up. I couldn't help but get a few pictures. Below are a couple of them. One is the wedding cake.

There is a new website with a lot of information about different kinds of wedding sites in the Nashville area. Here are some of the categories included:

Privately owned Nashville wedding venues. These include some of the same wedidng locations reviewed on this blog such as Historic Cedarwood, Springhaven Mansion, CJ's Off the Square and Riverwood Mansion.

Nashville Wedding Reception Sites. You'll find a few questions you should ask of venues you are considering.

CJ's Off the Square is having an open house February 27th. At this event, brides and socialites can:

* View their 2010 Invitation Collection
* Sample cake flavors by The Bake Shoppe
* And get a sneak peak at the nearly finished event pavilion opening in April

Click on the link below to register:

CJ's Off the Square Open House Registration


CJ's also has a new blog: http://cjsoffthesquare.com/weddings/


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There's a new Murfreesboro wedding location. It's Gateway Island operated by the city park's department. You can see some pictures I took from my first wedding there on a sunny and warm November day. To see the photos go to: www.gatewayislandmurfreesboro.blogspot.com

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