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Forgiving the name, Big Canoe is an excellent north Georgia woodsy resort community. We made our way up there today to check it out as a possible site for the wedding. After you leave the main highway, it’s nearly 20 miles across the countryside until you finally reach the gate. Then it’s a few miles of winding road like the picture above, and you’re deep in a great forest with homes hidden in the background and well cared grounds (golf courses) and lakes everywhere else.

Whereas the wedding we attended in Phoenix last November was the epitome a great wedding in the desert, it will be nice to have our out of state visitors experience a bit of Atlanta, but then also drive through these woods and get a snapshot of picturesque north Georgian scenery.

- Oh yeah. We visited the site today, and decided to put the deposit down and lock it in. *thumbs up*

So we’ve taken care of one of the biggest issues – the location and the date. This site is also very accommodating – we get the spot for the entire day (they only schedule 1 wedding per day), we have our choice of caterers, AND we can buy all the alcohol ourselves! (Put a Costco membership on the list of things we need.)

There was a wedding setting up today while we were there and they were nice enough to allow us to walk around and check everything out. The reception house is exactly that – a large house with several large rooms and a wrapping patio. Different from a huge hall, it’ll be a nice change of pace from the common big box reception setup. We’re pretty sure that most of our people will get up and mingle and talk and have fun so it should be good – plus we don’t care if we’re up mingling the entire time – it’ll be great to just see everyone.

The actual ceremony will be on a large patio overlooking the lake – in the back yard – so it’s an easy walk transition over to the reception – no wait, no traveling – and right to the party after the ceremony – awesome.

Actually, when we told the scheduler that we wanted to put the deposit down today, she had to call two other couples who had come in before us and tell them that they needed to give her a credit card number right then and there or else we’d get the space. Fortunately, we got it.

Oh. What’s also quite nice and possible awesome (we do have to coordinate everything) is that they rent out a number of houses nearby – and they look like this with the attached view of the area:

So yeah. It’ll be extra nice for our friends/family that decide to stay up there with us.

After sorting all of that out, we decided to get lunch and then we found a cow.