Venue Search #10: Linekin Bay Resort in Boothbay Harbor, ME

And here we are, the final venue to discuss from our marathon of venue visits this past weekend.  Just a little ways up the Maine coast from Bailey Island lies Boothbay Harbor, Maine, another popular destination for my family growing up.  At least once every summer, my family would go up to Boothbay Harbor, go shopping in the town's stores, and go on a seal cruise out into the harbor and the ocean to see the seals sunbathing out on the rocks.  Boothbay Harbor was the site of my parent's honeymoon (they got married in Lewiston at St. Joseph's church and had their reception at Lost Valley in Auburn), so there's a bit of a family history involved with this location as well.

Once again, I got to see a new side of an old destination through our visit to the Linekin Bay Resort in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

Linekin Bay Resort is located on the other side of Boothbay Harbor, away from the hustle and bustle of the downtown area and the vacation inns on the wharfs.  Located on its own plot of land, the resort is actually quite similar to The Driftwood Inn in terms of being spread across multiple buildings while having a centrally-located office building and reception area/restaurant.  Compared to The Driftwood Inn, however, Linekin has a lot more space for a ceremony and reception and a lot more rooms to put people up in.

Linekin is a fairly-affordable venue choice, although we would have to rent out the majority (if not all) of the resort space for our off-season wedding.  This is one of the positives of having a large number of out-of-town guests coming for our wedding.  Since Linekin is located close to the downtown area of Boothbay Harbor, there would also be plenty for our guests to see and do in town, although depending on the date of our wedding there is a chance that many of the tourist destinations would have closed down by that time.

There is a good amount of interior space at the Linekin Bay Resort, which could be useful in coming up with an alternative ceremony site in the event of bad weather spoiling our wedding day.  While the interior space is a bit plain in appearance, I believe that we would have enough room and it is my understanding that the owners would be amenable to helping us arrange this inside space for the purposes of a ceremony.  As always though, the hope is to be able to have an outdoor ceremony, as many of the places we've looked at don't have the best alternative options.

I find myself at a bit of a loss for words, which (as those of you who have been reading this blog know) is a bit of a rarity for me.  It's not that the Linekin Bay Resort is a bad venue or a venue that we're not taking seriously in our hunt for where we're going to have our wedding.  I just find myself unable to spend a whole lot of time talking about it, which may be an indication of something that I feel the venue lacks: a magical, memorable quality.  It is certainly possible that we could have the wedding at this venue, have all of the close family staying on-site, and get a really gorgeous day for our ceremony.  All of this could come together and make for an enjoyable and unforgettable time.  Looking at the venue without the family and friends there, and without the weather in perfect harmony, however, leaves me looking for a little bit more.

And with that I've reached the end of the list of venues that we have visited so far.  Of course, as soon as we got back to Blue Hill last Sunday night, Katelyn found a few venues on her list of bookmarked places that we'd neglected to put on our list of places to visit.  Yes, that's right, we may very well be looking at another in-depth venue hunt in our near-future.  As always, stay tuned here at The Groom's Take for the latest information about our wedding planning.  Hopefully we'll be able to tell you where the heck this thing is going to take place before too long.

More information and photographs of Linekin Bay Resort can be found at the venue's website, http://www.linekinbayresort.com/. Linekin Bay Resort is located about an hour and twenty minutes from Portland, an hour and twenty-five minutes from Lewiston, and two hours and twenty-five minutes from Bangor.