Venue Search #11: Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast in Hallowell, ME

After a long delay, it is time for me to do some reporting on the venue we visited last Sunday (October 4th, 2009).  This time around we decided to make some calls in advance to the three places we wanted to visit (Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast, Cliffside Lodge, and Point Sebage Resort).  We were able to get in touch with Maple Hill Farm, and we actually set a time to meet with them as our first stop on the venue search.

Check out our pictures and reaction to Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast in Hallowell, Maine.

One of the appealing facets of the Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast is the strides that the owners have made to make their building environmentally-friendly.  There are solar panels and all manner of LEED-certified components at play on the premises, which is a major asset for our need for a venue that is architecturally-interesting.  Its location in Hallowell is also just outside Maine's capitol city of Augusta, but far enough away from the city to feel peaceful and secluded.

The bed & breakfast is very nice inside, with a number of rooms to host guests from away (though not enough to accomodate everyone).  The building is separated into three main areas; the bed & breakfast, the conference room (the red barn section) and the dining room (shown in the picture above).  The number of people we're expecting at our wedding can be handled by the venue for the day, but we'd be pushing towards their limit somewhat.

Perhaps the only major problem with the venue is a fairly major problem, however.  There isn't a very good ceremony site on the property.  The preferred ceremony site sits in front of the bed & breakfast section, and there are sheep in a penned-up area behind the site.  It is also a fairly small ceremony area, as you can see in the picture below, which would raise some issues in terms of accomodating our wedding party to see the ceremony.  However, as co-owner Scott Cowger has helpfully pointed out in comments, they can accomodate up to 250 people in their front yard ceremony space.  My sincere apologies for the incorrect reporting.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having a pastoral backdrop to our ceremony (after all, Clark's Cove Farm still tops our list), but this particular view is perhaps even a little bit more rustic than we would like it to be.  Further, the lack of a good interior ceremony site (most interior ceremonies use the fireplace in the picture above as a backdrop, which does not suit me or Katelyn) makes it difficult to count on the venue for our time of year, particularly as we were visiting it on a rainy October day.

Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast is an affordable option and a pretty location, but as Katelyn and I were leaving the property, we just didn't feel the "wow-factor" that we're looking for from the venue we're going to pay a good sum of money to have our wedding with.  It's on our list of possible venue choices, but it's not particularly high on that list.

More information and photographs of Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast can be found at the venue's website, http://www.maplebb.com/.  Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast is located about an hour and five minutes from Portland, forty-five minutes from Lewiston, and one hour and twenty-five minutes from Bangor.