Weddingbee boards

Look up the Tea Room of Gambrill State Park. We had our entire wedding there and couldn't have been happier for what we got for such a ridiculously low price. Lots of DIY to do at this venue, though. And probably wouldn't be large enough for more than 65 or so guests from our experience.

@aodemerle@gmail.com:  You basically rent the entire cabin on the state park property for about $250/weekend day or $150 or so for each weekday. You have it from 8 or 9 AM to 8 or 9 PM (depending on the month). We rented it for a Friday and Saturday so we could set up the venue the day before for our Saturday wedding. There's a large wooden floored main room, a large kitchen area with everything your caterers would need, and two nice restrooms. There's a huge fireplace and they provide you free firewood if you think you could use it. Our wedding was in May so we didn't really need it, but I imagine a cool October wedding would be nice with a warm fire. It also includes all the chairs/tables you could possibly need. However, they only provide 75 chairs. From our experience you'd only be able to fit just 75 chairs in the main room without any tables etc as it is kinda small. 80 people might work if you wanted to do a mostly outdoor event though, using the cabin for dancing etc. But I imagine it could get tight if, for example, it rained. We were able to cram 65 guests into the venue for our toasts, but thankfully the weather was good for us and people eventually scattered to the outdoor picnic areas with their food. We rented a nearby overlook for the ceremony. Gorgeous view and super cheap (I think it was just $25 per hour.) You can't take the chairs out of the venue to use for an outdoor ceremony, though. It's also in a state park, so if you plan on a very late reception, plan on bringing your own lighting as it got super dark outside the building on Friday night as we were setting up. Let me know if you have any other questions! You could also email the park rangers as they were very helpful both before, during and after our wedding. Oh, and you need a separate liquor license too if you plan on booze. That was just $35, though. They give you all that info during their open houses so you could scope the place out. We attended an open house in February. They have those monthly on the off-season.

Edit: here's their main web site with the number to call the rangers http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/gambrill.asp

You can also see if the venue is available for certain dates through I believe a general reservation site for Maryland Parks and Recreation:

http://reservations.dnr.state.md.us/

IF you search with Gambrill State Park as the specific park, the Tea Room comes up as a cabin to rent.