This Historic Venue is Perfect for Wedding Portraits

Melissa Baran
June 30, 2017
Categories: Modern, Real Weddings

For a good part of my childhood, I grew up right next door to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Since, I’ve visited my sister there on several occasions. What I love most about this locale? It’s historic charm. It truly does boast some of the loveliest restaurants and venues. Case in point? Today’s fete captured by Something Blue by Susan Elizabeth at the Excelsior Lancaster. Layers upon layers of blush and mint coziness. See it all here in the full gallery!

From Something Blue by Susan Elizabeth… This stunning wedding was at a super unique venue in Lancaster PA. The venue is a one-of-a-kind historic building with multiple levels, each having its own unique look. There are catacombs in the basement, a terrace and garden courtyard draped with string lights, and an awesome “top secret” floor with chippy, peeling paint, raw cement, and red bricks with tons of natural light pouring in! The bridal party was in navy, dusty blue, and mint and the florals were gorgeous!

From The Bride… Our colors are navy blue, mint green, pewter grey, and gold. I had always dreamed of a navy and mint wedding (and had a pinterest board before John and I were even together titled “my impending navy and mint wedding”…haha). We loved that combination with the gold and pewter added in because it’s subtle, vintage-inspired, and elegant. It complimented the rustic-vintage theme of Excelsior, and especially the mint green paint around some of the windows and on the walls. The gold sparkle touches were just too much fun to pass up!

We fell in love with Excelsior the moment we walked in. We had visited a few other venues in Hershey (where I grew up) and had driven to Lancaster that day to see another site that ended up not working out, but they recommended that we take a look at Excelsior, which wasn’t yet open. We knocked on the front door and almost walked away, but one of the owners answered (in the midst of sanding and painting in preparation for opening before their first wedding in 3 weeks!!) and showed us around. It had everything we wanted in a wedding venue – beautiful, spacious, and unique, even completely unfinished and covered in dust. We especially loved that the entire venue and all its spaces were ours for the night, so we could use it all however we wanted. Kelly and John, Excelsior’s owners, were so warm and kind. We loved them instantly and their vision for Excelsior was so clear, even still in the works. The decision was easy!

My dress is an ivory lace sweetheart-neck mermaid gown with a mauve-colored ribbon sash around the waist that ties into a bow and falls down the back of the dress. The dress has almost a pink glow in the light! It was the perfect combination of vintage and sparkle, and elegant but fitted all the right places. From the few times I made John watch “Say Yes to the Dress”, I knew that he couldn’t stand shapeless wedding dresses (or “bags” as he called them) so I wanted something that accentuated my body a little!

We’re going on a Mediterranean cruise for our honeymoon! Flying to Venice the Saturday after our wedding and stopping in Dubrovnik and Split, Croatia, Olympus and Athens, Greece, and Ravenna, Italy, and spending a few days in Venice after the cruise before we come back to the US. We’re so excited!!!!

Some of our wedding details… I love chalkboards – you will see calligraphy-d chalkboards all over the place! I had fun learning calligraphy for those! The Ketubah that we’re signing before the ceremony was created for us by a designer that I worked closely with through my job who lives in Chicago. We wrote most of the text ourselves and are so excited for that special moment with our grandparents before the ceremony begins. The glass that we will share wine out of during the ceremony was given to and engraved for John’s great-grandparents for their 25th wedding anniversary, so it’s over 100 years old. Our cake was vanilla with buttercream frosting… John and I are purists when it comes to cake! A piece of lace from my mom’s wedding dress will be wrapped around the stems of my bouquet.

Our flowers are lush and vintage-inspired with lots of green leafing (eucalyptus and olive branch) and cream, ivory, and light pink flowers, with hints of mint green and light blue. The bridesmaids will have long mint green ribbons hanging from their bouquets. My bouquet is relaxed and unstructured, with lots of peonies and roses to offset the dark green leaves beneath them. In addition to the bouquets, you’ll see this style across the top of our chuppah, on our cake, and in a variety of centerpieces during dinner – 8 tables will have high arrangements on a 4-post gold stands, and the other 12 tables will compliment that with lower arrangements to give the room some depth.

Having everyone we love together in one room was amazing – and we loved seeing each other for the first time!

Some advice for other Brides: Don’t procrastinate – take care of everything you can take care of early in your engagement so that you can have some down-time before all the details kick in during the last few months. There’s no way to avoid some stress near the end, so don’t make it worse than it has to be! ! Also – don’t forget the point of the wedding and why you’re doing it all. In the last few weeks I’ve reminded myself over and over that I have a dress, we have food and alcohol, everyone we love will be there, and at the end of the day I get to marry John, so everything else is really extra.