This Tulsa

As a little girl I was not the type to walk around with a lace tablecloth around my head and pretend to walk down the aisle. I very rarely dreamed about my wedding day and what everything would be like, and even after being engaged for over a month I have only purchased one bridal magazine in my life. Going into wedding planning, for someone like me who had no idea what she wanted, was a little intimidating. I had no idea what venues were available (let alone which ones were good), where to start my cake search, or even where more than one bridal shop was for me to start looking at dresses. I have lived in Tulsa my whole life, but I simply have not paid attention to these things until lately. The great thing is that Tulsa is a wonderful place to plan a wedding, and after searching websites and calling a few places most of my wedding is already planned. Tulsa is full of great resources if you just open your eyes to look for them.

The first thing I did (which I believe set the tone for the entire planning process) was visit RealSimple.com and download their wedding planning checklist. This checklist is amazing, and goes through everything you would otherwise forget to think of. They break down how much you should spend on various aspects of the day based on your overall budget, give you a month-by-month checklist of what needs to get done, and give you all kinds of helpful tools like an alcohol purchasing chart and a photography checklist. I love lists, and this website really hit me in the right spot.

There are plenty of wedding planning websites designed specifically for those planning Tulsa weddings, but I couldn’t find one that met all of my needs. I simply Googled things like “wedding venues in Tulsa”, and “Tulsa caterers” and lists and lists of options came up. So far I’ve encountered some great people and some not so helpful people along the way, but I’ve found that most people in Tulsa truly want my wedding day to be great, and they want to help in whatever way they can.

The first big obstacle was to find the venue. This was a little difficult for me because my finance’ and I wanted our wedding and reception to be at the same site. For those of you who are like us and want your entire shindig to be at one venue, it can be rather difficult to find places that are big enough to accommodate more than 120 people. We actually were lucky since that is exactly the number we are inviting. Here were my favorite places after searching Tulsa for a few weeks:

Tulsa Historical Society: This venue was really nice, but since we were planning a day time wedding and they are open during the day they didn’t want us to interrupt their visitors, so we reluctantly stepped aside. For weddings of around 120 people you can have a nice indoor ceremony, but if you get blessed with nice weather their outdoor scene is gorgeous.

Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame: The jazz hall of fame was fun, and would have been great for a night-time casual wedding and reception with mingling and hors d’oeuvres, but we wanted a day-time event and it just didn’t seem to fit.

Dresser Mansion: Another gorgeous venue for an all in one event. The only reason I didn’t consider this one was because one of my best friends had her wedding there, but I would have jumped at it otherwise. It’s perfect if you’re fearless when it comes to weather, because the ceremony will only fit outside if you want more than 100 people.

After lots of searching, we decided on Tarp Chapel. It’s a perfectly adorable, glass chapel in Broken Arrow that is perfect for a daytime ceremony like we want, or for a sunset ceremony in the evening. Many, many people had suggested we check it out. It turns out that other people’s advice led us to the right spot even when a wedding website in Tulsa couldn’t. I guess the best wedding planners in Tulsa are the guests!