Venue Search Part 1: Brooksby Farms

by Breen

I will go in order of how we saw the venues. The first venue we looked at was Smith Barn at Brooksby Farms in Peabody, MA. Our appointment was at 4, but due to construction and traffic, we were about 45 minutes late for our appointment giving us time for the most abbreviated tour ever.

Nevertheless, I had time to snap some photos and we even got to see the set up (with guests) so that was kind of a bonus.

Warning: picture heavy post ahead.

Carriage Room


coffee and tea station


The all important bar, with top shelf liquor removed


Oooh pretty barn set up. I love the centerpieces but my photo of them was extra blury.


Hello wedding guests, don’t mind us.


So cute. Might have to “borrow” this idea for place settings.


Shinny dance floor

Pretty stained glass


My dad can (and did) tell you everything you never knew you wanted to know about this tractor.


It’s historical, and there’s old orchards

Mmm pears. Now I want a pear.


Practicing our best wedding crashing. Don’t mind the two ladies taking pictures who you don’t know.

Ceremony site- side view

Ceremony site


Back of ceremony site


After all that rushing and hectic looking, I need a champagne celebration when we got home.
Luckily my mother agreed and she even let me use the champagne bride glass she used at her wedding.
Totally love this vintage glass. I might have to borrow it again for the actual wedding.

*In case you couldn’t tell by the grainy/blury/oops my camera was on the wrong setting for 90% of the time I was taking pictures, all photos in this post are mine. I know, total surprise based on the amazing quality, but true!

So, as with every place we looked at, there were some pros and cons to this place.

Pros:

  • It definitely fit the “rustic elegance” theme we were going for
  • We knew people who got married here and they raved about it, so we could use them for help in the planning process
  • We loved the barn reception area, so pretty!
  • It’s a working farm, so we could always go back and visit on our anniversary and get some apple cider.

Cons:

  • The site fee was expensive (for us)
  • The ceremony site was not our favorite, it was a little plain and looked more like a back yard. I’m sure it can be spruced up a bit, but it certainly lacked a “wow” factor first impression.
  • Only 120 people fit on the main floor which means we would probably have to use both floors of the barn because of the size of our wedding. We worried people might feel excluded, but thought we could fix this buy putting all the “younger” guests up there for more of a party atmosphere.

Pro/Con:

  • There was more work to do in this one, there was no one caterer and no specific vendors we had to use. The caterer had to be from an approved list, but we still had 6 options to work with. We had a lot more freedom with this venue than with all of the other ones we looked at, but this could be a good or a bad thing depending on how much work we wanted to put in.

We liked this as it had a lot of what we were looking for and while the ceremony site was not our favorite, we loved the reception area.

Miss something?
Start of the Venue Hunt

 

*Edit: Professional photos (aka much better than mine) of the wedding we “crashed” at Brooksby can be found here.

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