How to Throw a Wedding at Millersylvania State Park Environmental Learning Center (ELC)

Since my blog is seeming to get a lot of traffic from people looking for more information about having a wedding at Millersylvania State Park ELC, I decided to write down some tips based on my experience of getting married there on September 7th 2013.  We rented the ELC for three nights- Thursday through Sunday and it was a huge success!  Many people even called it "the best wedding ever" and had so much fun because they got to spent so much time together and there were so many fun things to do.  I also liked how it being at the park forced our guests to unplug for the weekend (cell reception was spotty- you can get it at the boat launch down the drive way if needed).  Here are the steps we took to plan our wedding at Millersylvania- things may have changed since last summer, but I WISH I had had some of this information last year, so I'll do my best to remember the details

1) Schedule a tour- this was so hard.  I literally called the park office 8 times (not exaggerating) and played phone tag with various park rangers before I scheduled an actual tour.  We had also checked the place out on our own during the off season- which is not technically allowed- so be discrete and quick about it if you do.  We ended up taking 2 tours- one at the beginning of planning and one nearer to the wedding to wrap up final details and to have our caterers see the kitchen.  Both times were great and we were walked around with a park ranger who answered all of our questions. 

2) Request a Date-Call the state park reservation line to talk to someone about requesting a reservation of the ELC (you might want to do this before scheduling a tour) (should be: 360-902-8600).  We dealt with someone named Sarah who was very nice and helpful.
(We made the mistake at first of talking to a park ranger at Millersylvania who said we just needed to call 9 months to the date and reserve the ELC- this was wrong information- that only applies to campsites).  
Reserving the ELC is a lot more complicated:


The way it works is that you have to fill out a request form to rent the ELC for the summer (see below) by a certain date (for 2013 it was August 31st)  Priority is based on responding first and having seniority (the more times you rent the higher priority you get)

If you are planning a summer wedding, you can let go of the idea of having it in August-  The way the reservations work is that you get priority based on how long you've been renting the ELC and there is a handful of summer camps that reserve it every year, therefore, they get priority and they book up the whole month of August.  Your best bet is June or September- and you could get lucky and maybe get a weekend in July.

In our case, we barely made the August 31st deadline- since we received some wrong information and was confused, so we had no chance of a July or August wedding.  Sarah suggested shooting for June or September- you can see her advice below:

This is what Sarah wrote in an email about requesting a weekend in June or September:
Another thing you can try is calling one year in advance for September weekends.  After Labor Day, no special request form is needed, just a phone call.  You would need to call at 12:01 exactly 365 days from the day you want the reservation to start.  So if you wanted the weekend of September 6-8, you would need to call us at 12:01 AM on September 6 of this year.  Because of time differences in everyone’s phones, clocks etc, it’s completely normal for folks to call at 11:59, 12:00, 12:01, 12:02 and so on.  We make the reservation in the order the messages are received so that first call at 12:01 gets the reservation.  Because of this ELC’s popularity, this is typical of how people request weekends at this park. 

It was a little stressful, but we stayed up til midnight (3am actually because we were on the east coast) and left 3 messages 1 year from the weekend we wanted and we got it!  We also got some weekend choices in June from our paper request- so in the end we had to choose between June or September.

3) Pay deposit.  Our deposit for 3 nights was $798.54  Send in confirmation paperwork.  See below for copy of contract and  list of rules you must agree to. 

4) REQUEST A LATE CHECKOUT (and maybe an early check in too).   At some point, we asked a ranger about this option (which is allowed) and we are so glad we did!  Regular checkout is 11am and the morning after a big wedding- there was no way we were going to get all of our guests out of there and clean the whole place by 11am!!!  You have to pay for a whole day but you can check out as late as 5pm if you get an early checkout. 

5) Alcohol- compete the liquor license paperwork when you pay your deposit and send in your confirmation paperwork. That is all you need to do to have alcohol at your wedding.  Unfortunately, kegs are not allowed... (your probably/maybe could get away with one- but we did not try)  We stuck to beer and wine and it was fine.  Plus there is an ice machine in the kitchen which was awesome for making drinks and filling up beer buckets!  Side note- we got all our wine at Costco and we over-bought, so we were able to return unopened wine! 

6) Cabins- Think seating charts are tricky? Figuring our who is staying in which cabin was a whole new challenge.  There are 3 cabins with bathrooms and showers- the nurse's cabin (the biggest, we stayed there) and 2 more staff cabins that are actually split into 2 cabins that share a bathroom in the middle- with 2 bunk beds on each side.  We were worried about a couple guests who would want bathrooms so there are some options for those guests.  We were told you can also have guests set up tents, but no one did.  We tried to have a section of cabins for people with young kids that would be a little quieter.

7) Book venders and figure out what you need- we were very happy with our venders, especially MarvsBBQ truck that made food for the rehearsal dinner.   We wanted our ceremony in the barn and got conflicting information from 2 different park rangers about whether we could use the chairs from the lodge in the barn- so we ended up just playing it safe and renting 100 chairs for $200 from Celebrations.  They delivered and picked up and it made things much easier.   Also, we were worried about having enough card tables for appetizers on the lawn- there were actually plenty of card tables in the closets of the lodge.  The lodge is pretty fully stocked with kitchen items, but we brought table cloths, mason jars, wine glasses (they only have plastic cups and mugs), french presses for coffee (they have water percolators), aprons, kitchen towels, etc.
There is no laundry on site
They do not have recycling on site (shocking for an "environmental learning center") so we labeled some garbage cans around the site and did our own recycling at the end- there are lots of extra big garbage cans. 
You have to bring your own firewood for the fire pit- there is a covered place to store it
The volley ball court already has a net and there was a tether ball already on site as well as horse shoes.  We brought a basketball
You are allowed to drive on the grounds as long as you are aware of where not to drive (the park ranger will explain)

8) Parking- We had received mixed messages about how to pay for parking.  Some rangers said that we had to pay the $10 day use fee per car that was NOT staying the night at the ELC (and did not have a Discovery Pass).  If your guests are staying the night, they do not need a day-use parking fee.  In the end, we weren't charged for anyone's day use fee- it would have been a headache to calculate the # of guests who didn't stay the night and didn't have a Discovery Pass and how many cars they drove and on how many days.  Thank goodness the ranger checking us out just didn't even bother with that detail!  Not sure if it will hold true for all the rangers.... Just tell your guests they don't need a parking pass or day use pass and to drive right into the ELC.

9) Rental House- There is a vacation house at the end of the driveway to the ELC.  More info here .  It was SUPER over-priced (almost $300 a night- but I see online they lowered the prices- yay!!) , but we had guests who had a new born baby and others who wanted to have a shower, so they decided to rent it for the weekend! 

10) Showers and Bathrooms- there are 2 big shower/bathrooms- one labeled "girls" and one labeled "boys".  We made signs that said "toilets are coed and showers are girls" (and one for the boys) and then we hung a curtain up where the shower section of the bathroom.  That way guests didn't have to trek across camp to use the toilets, but showers (which are similar to locker room showers) were gender specific.  We also brought some full-length mirrors since the bathrooms don't have any and we knew people would be getting dressed for the wedding on site. 

11) During the weekend- Things ran very smoothly!  We had a park ranger assigned to check in on us during the weekend and he came by a couple times a day but never got in the way or had any problems with us (I was worried about noise- but it was never a problem).  If we had questions for him, we would write them on the white board in the kitchen and he would answer them when he stopped by.  We did have trouble with the dishwasher a few times and he fixed it.

12) Meals- obviously everyone is going to approach this differently.  We had the rehearsal dinner and the wedding dinner catered.   We hired 2 teenagers to wash dishes all day on Saturday the day of the wedding and recruited our friends and family to sign up for dish duty the other days- people were MORE than happy to help out!  We cooked a big pizza dinner Thursday night and provided brunches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning- we assigned people to cook and supplied the ingredients.  We also had a sandwich bar set out for the afternoon in coolers.  

13) Checking out- This was the least fun part of the weekend.  I'm so glad we had a late check out, but at the same time- people lingered for a long time so it made it hard to actually get everything cleaned and checked out.  Everyone wanted to help but I wasn't that organized to know what I needed help with, so it was a slow process.  There are checkout lists in all the cabins, bathrooms and lodge- so take note.  You might want to pre-assign someone to clean the bathrooms- because that isn't a fun job.  We asked people to clean up their cabins, but in the end we walked around before checkout and made sure they were actually clean (not all of them were).  When we were finally ready to check out we walked around to each cabin with the ranger- this was pretty thorough- and all the buildings.  It took about an hour and we had to re-mop the floor of the kitchen in the end.  

14) Payment- we settled our bill after checkout.  Three nights (and the extra late check out) ended up costing $2,700.  I had done a bunch of math based on # of day use people vs. overnight guests and parking fees, etc.  In the end it was pretty simple.  You can have up to 150  overnight guests but are charged a minimum of 70.  We only had 59 overnight guests so we were charged the minimum for each night and 1 day.  We also paid a small fee for the early check in.  Overall, a pretty good price for a 4 day venue!