This past weekend the Bergquist family ventured down to Long Island for a friend’s wedding. It was mentioned that we should prepare for extravagance.
I’m not really up on the whole Long Island wedding scene, but apparently it is a huge business. I was told that my friend looked at fourteen “wedding centers” when considering her reception location. Yes, fourteen. And apparently there were many more to visit but they really liked the first one they saw and were just tired of looking. Huh. Who knew?
Even though we were all appropriately dressed in semi-formal attire, including the 5-week old baby- of course, I hadn’t really given much thought about the reception location. The invitation we received in the mail months prior said we’d be headed to the Bourne Mansion. The name didn’t mean anything to me and I didn’t do any pre-reception Googling to investigate, so we just plugged the address into the GPS and off we went. As we were traveling up the private road to the house, it became clear that it was a mansion with a capital M. I believe my oh so sophisticated response was “Holy Crap!” when the house came into view.
Here is what we saw…
Thanks to this site for the front picture and this site for the back picture. (It was the wrong time of day for us to get good photos and there were a bunch of people everywhere that would probably not want to be posted all over the internet thanks to this blog…)
So while most of the people at the reception were taking advantage of the open bar, raw bar, outrageous number of appetizer stations and the amazing view off the veranda of the Great South Bay, I was skulking about the historic house oohing and aaahing at the original lighting fixtures, built-ins galore, and ornate plaster work. Not surprisingly my husband and parents officially declared that I needed a real estate intervention.
Yes folks, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am a real estate dork and I am not afraid to admit it.
Here’s a site with some great photos of the Mansion’s interior, just ignore the smiling and smooching people and pay attention to the architecture.
