World renowned for Mardi Gras, Jazz festivals, Louisiana Voodoo and its unique architectural style reflecting the cities multi-cultural heritage, New Orleans is a perfect spot for a lively wedding in Louisiana.
Just wandering through the French Quarter transports you to another place, the smell of incredible Creole cooking lingers on the air and even in rare quiet times you can imagine the raucous bands of masked revellers parading through its streets. Nearby, the famous City Park trees stand strong along the Mississippi; dripping with Spanish Moss that delicately trails in the breeze giving an ‘other worldly’ feel. The beautiful cemeteries are filled with international history and magical tales of voodoo, their distinct above ground tombs are an attraction in themselves. NOLA is certainly an absorbing place…and considered to be the most haunted in all of America too! Get married here and you can have guests from past AND present with the help of a Voodoo priestess!
It seems relatively easy to arrange the legal aspect of a wedding in Louisiana with a reasonable list of paperwork needed and a rather sensible (in such a party town) 72 hour ‘cooling off period’ between procuring your marriage licence and being able to actually marry. The easy part done, now the hard part is deciding where to hold your wedding! With abundant options this could quite literally, take forever.
Ballrooms, museums, plantation houses, hotels, bars, mansions, theatres, riverboats…even a damn QUAIL farm has kicked out the Quail and opened its doors to couples wanting to tie the knot in spectacular surrounds in famous NOLA…and this is all before even considering what kind of food you will serve. The only limits are those of your imagination.
This is a place where the people are from all corners of the globe, here they have shared their cultures and intermingled to create a vibrant city with a pulse of its own. It is strange yet far from mysterious, the history of New Orleans explains it all and the locals wear their cultural heritage proudly on their sleeves yet everyone is welcome to join in and add their own ten pence.
New Orleans is a live culture, a growing ethnicity that has open arms to all. Explore and you will find Italian restaurants that have been in families for generations, you can celebrate Saint Patricks Day with a fervour only matched in Dublin, find African American store-front churches or join a Jewish or Greek Orthodox congregation. Eat cornbread, Po-boys, Paella, Jambalaya, Mufflettas, shrimp and turtle and definitely enjoy amazing coffee with famous Beignets at famous Café Du Monde on famous Jackson Square. The food is a prime example of how wonderfully diverse New Orleans is. Fancy French blends with spicy African, Cajun and Creole to create a cuisine like no other.
New Orleans is one on its own and it will suck you in. It will entertain you, welcome you, absorb you and it will most certainly surprise you.
How to get married in Louisiana,