Country Club Weddings

Ideas & Inspiration

Country Club Weddings

Every bride who’s held her wedding at a country club seems to hear the same feedback: It was “elegant,” “classy,” and “beautiful”—usually prefaced with “the most.”

“I heard more than one time that it was the classiest wedding they had been to,” says bride Becky Morin Watson of her Mendakota Country Club nuptials in Mendota Heights. Bride Jessica Dosen, who had her reception at the Lafayette Club in Minnetonka Beach, similarly reports, “Many people say it was the most beautiful wedding they had ever been to.” 

A little initial skepticism can be forgiven (can you ever fully trust new parents who claim their child to be the most beautiful being ever to grace the Earth?); and when love is involved, the mundane can rapidly turn into the extraordinary. So do country clubs really have some magical wedding charm, or at least above-average accommodations?

“Some of my friends had perceptions of country clubs as uppity,” Watson says, “but that went away once they got there.” Indeed, doubts quickly dissolve after talking to wedding planners, hearing what services the clubs provide, and most of all, seeing the wedding photos. With the immaculate greenery of golf courses combined with chandelier-lit ballrooms, many clubs create an ambiance hard to describe without using, yes, “elegant,” “classy,” or “beautiful.”

Jessica and her husband Jeff Boesiger didn’t initially plan to have their wedding at a country club. “We had been living in Chicago and planned to have the wedding there,” she says. “We even had a place booked, but it didn’t feel like us.” The setting was distinctly urban, but “scenic and spacious” were important features to the couple. So Jessica and Jeff came to Minnesota, where Jessica grew up, to take a look at their options. A single visit to the Lafayette Club, and Jessica says the space “felt totally right.” Jessica’s parents were members when she was growing up, and she always had it in the back of her mind for her wedding. “I have very fond memories of going there Easter Sunday and Mother’s Day, golfing with my family. It makes me think of youth, happy times, and family. It has the quality of getting away.”