How has your weekend been thus far?
Mine has been busy but that’s been a good thing. We started things out by relaxing on Friday evening after work.
Wine and cheese with Isaac after a long week = perfection!
On Saturday we woke up early to tour The Mill at Fine Creek, a potential spot to have our wedding ceremony and reception. The Mill came highly recommended by a couple friends of ours and we knew as soon as we we drove up that we were going to love the place.
It’s about 30 minutes from out house (downtown richmond) in a rural area of Powattan surrounded by gorgeous scenery including the creek. The area around the Mill used to be an old village so there are several small buildings that were shops or houses. The old miller’s cottage is still on the property (now a guesthouse) and there are remnants of the mill left on the property as well. We want to hold our ceremony outdoors so it could take place out by the old mill if we have it here.
The building for indoor wedding ceremonies and receptions is only 8 years old but it was built to look older and it’s beautiful.
My photos don’t really do the place justice. They have much better ones on their website.
I didn’t get photos inside, but the place is well decorated and spotlessly clean – you’d think this is a given when you’re touring venus but we’ve actually toured a few that haven’t been very clean. The funny thing is that The Mill is actually going through some renovations right now and it was still the cleanest venue we visited. You can tell the owners and their team really take care of the place.
As soon as we walked into the bar area Isaac got excited because they had a nice selection of beers include several microbrews. This is a plus because most venues have the same ol’ same ol’ when it comes to beer options and Isaac is a bit of beer lover. I also noticed that they serve wines from Veritas, a local winery we visited a few months ago for our 7 year anniversary.
Lisa, the owner of The Mill, was the one that gave us the tour of the place and she is great – very knowledgeable and informative. She is also the chef/caterer and would be the person we’d work with to set our menu for the reception. Lisa let us know that she likes people to leave remembering how good the food was. <-- Obviously a lady after my own heart. We talked about how important healthy, real food is to me and how we could potentially work together on the menu. She had some really fun ideas including using local foods when possible for the items served at the reception. All super exciting stuff!
Overall, we were very impressed and The Mill is now our first choice. If cost wasn’t a big deal to us, we probably would have signed the contract yesterday, Isaac and I haven’t been saving for a wedding and honestly didn’t know that they were this costly until we started exploring venues. We still have a few more venues to tour over the next couple weeks and in the meantime we really need to sit down and figure out our budget.
My friend Lauren, who just recently signed a contract for her wedding venue, sent me a tweet yesterday that said finding the perfect venue is like a marathon. She is so right! I’m just hoping that by this point we’re at least around mile 20. 
If you’re married, were you able to get married/hold your reception at the place that was your top choice or did you have to compromise for some reason or another?
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I’d highly recommend the Chopped 59′ salad sans the chorizo as it was awesome.
Brittany Mullins, HHC
