The Conservatory as a Wedding Venue: A Business Opportunity

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Conservatories are an ideal venue for events with its range of beautiful flowers, well-groomed trees, and charming fountains. Who wouldn’t want to get married amid lush greenery and vibrant blooms? It’s like having an outdoor ceremony in spring, except the couple and their guests are safe indoors, in any season or weather.

Clearly, this offers an opportunity when you own and run an events venue. You can work with us to ensure your conservatory can be a romantic, picturesque venue for weddings.

Here are important factors to consider when adding this sought-after space to your venue.

Your Finances

Your expenses and financial health will determine the kind of business loan you’ll need. You need to know how much capital you need to get construction going or to make a down payment on a conservatory.

Do you need to acquire more land space? Do you need to lease another property?

Other potential expenses you’re likely to incur with this expansion include new furniture, audio-video system, signage, and other operational elements that are essential for your venue.

The Location

Once you’re confident about your finances, it’s time to look at another important factor: the location. You have to ask yourself whether your location is ideal for building a conservatory or a greenhouse. Or do you need to relocate the business to make room for more space?

If you’ve decided to relocate, consider the accessibility of the location as well as its price. You’ll want to choose an area that’s popular for weddings or one that’s up and coming in the market.

The Design

The design of your conservatory could contribute to attracting potential customers. Apart from the plants and flower beds, you may want to add romantic fountains and a path lined with trees that are endemic to the area.

The combination of high-glass ceilings and lush greenery can appeal to any couple who wants the dreamiest wedding venue.

You’ll also want to consider access to views, which means choosing the right type of windows. Another crucial aspect to the conservatory’s design is the glazing and insulation. You’ll want to make sure that the venue is comfortable all year round.

Of course, sturdy materials are essential in the construction of your conservatory. Our team of conservatory contractors can help you decide on the key elements, such as a covering, frame, equipment configuration, and size.

Customized Conservatories, Optimized Profits

We have a flexible team who build event center and wedding venues. Our conservatory builders can create custom designs that fit your needs. We’ll also help you run the structure with as little effort as possible by installing automation features. A well-designed conservatory allows you to grow and cultivate an array of plants and flowers without any trouble at all. And we add automated features for climate control, moisture exposure options, and ventilation systems. This way, you can run your conservatory efficiently and profitably.

Our team, however, doesn’t stop at designing your conservatory. We’ll also take care of the paperwork because we aim to deliver a hassle-free process.

Contact us today for more information.

The World Horti Research Center

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I never tire of a new trip to the Netherlands. The Dutch have such electricity in the air. Its as if they have discovered a secret, and being Dutch, they are only too happy to share it. My current trip to the Netherlands is to spend some time at the World Horti Research Center, where horticulture has just crashed headlong into agriculture, and it’s winning.

Whatever we were growing for fresh food in a field in the past, can be more efficiently and effectively grown in a greenhouse.

  • We visited a greenhouse that had dug a well 2.4KM into the earth to obtain the heat required to heat the greenhouse, year round. After the initial investment, all heating costs were no cost from that day forward.
  • Glass evenly distributes the sunlight to all plants the same so there are no slow/fast maturing spots in the greenhouse, just even ripening.
  • There is also a device that can be installed where you go through it to get into the greenhouse, and it cleans your feet and hands. Sanitation is an utmost priority!

Whether tomatoes or flowers, massive quantities are grown on no wasted water, grown evenly, because the market shopper wants all produce to look the same every day of the year.

The WHRC has three main objectives.

A third of the building is dedicated to education. Students from far corners of the earth come to learn. These students are learning the most current methods of crop production and taking these skills back to China, Russia, USA – you name it. The Dutch are not about to keep this a secret.

They realized is that there are few people in the world prepared to embrace this new form of Ag/Hort. There are plenty of eager investors around the globe that are ready to throw money at these forms of crop production, but few candidates can apply who have the necessary skills.

Another third of the building is dedicated to companies in the industry who want to display their contribution to the new technology. Locally, Honeywell is well represented as a forerunner in environmental controls. Other companies display growing mediums, automation of many kinds. For example, there are lasers that prune plants to consistent sizes, screens that not only keep bugs out of the greenhouse, but keep the pollinating bees in the greenhouse (special bees are rotated every 30 days in the fruiting greenhouses [tomatoes]). Every new innovator of production products is there in a 365 trade show set up for all the world travelers that come daily to visit.

The final third of the structure is research greenhouses. New varieties are tested for market, new techniques are tested, and quantitative research is shared here. Companies will lease a greenhouse bay about 25′ X 60′, segregated from the attached growing area next door, and they will work intensively to explore new depths in the world of greenhouse growing.

The WHRC is located in the shadows of the International Flower Auction, a 2.5 million sq ft building in which the bulk of the world’s flowers are brought in fresh in the morning and shipped to markets around the world at night. I was here merely a year ago when the first steel column was set in the soil to begin construction. Today, it is a vibrant, bustling center for business and knowledge converging on an untapped frontier of world horticulture.

Trends ‘grow’ quickly here. A year ago, I never saw a ‘living wall’ today they are everywhere. Inside and outside of buildings, signs for companies are made of living walls, highway barriers are living walls. It’s just an example of how fast these trends are being adopted and made commonplace throughout the world as the Dutch set the pace for the industry that will soon feed the world.

Rooftop Event Center in Rockford IL

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Our company is no stranger to large commercial projects, take a look at this rooftop conservatory event center we built.

In the last 10 years adding on valuable square footage to a rooftop has been growing in popularity for entertaining, co-op growing or in this case – an event center / wedding venue in Rockford, IL. The team that was in charge of this building (The Standard) had goals for a destination wedding venue. The construction of this project was to coincide with the building renaissance taking place on the Rockford, IL riverfront. Conservatory Craftsmen was brought on for a the crowing jewel of the three story masterpiece – the rooftop conservatory.

The owners were intent on building the finest rooftop conservatory in the Chicago area. They knew they wanted something that would draw a wedding party out of the Windy city into a nearby venue with more to offer. Their dream was to have a rooftop event center that a couple would dream of being married in, and that also gave them the assurance that no matter what the weather was, the wedding could be ‘outdoors’.

Given the plan by the owners and architects, we called up aluminum extrusions out of Belgium to be the basis of this structure. Able to withstand the 130 mph winds and massive snow loads that torture a structure in this exposure.

The roof top of this 100 year old building was the biggest challenge.

There were walls here and there that had to be used to create connections. Decks weren’t level, and the winter installation on a rooftop was indeed a chilling experience our crews will never forget.

All material was set on the roof by crane to start the project. Our crews worked long days and weekends to set the portal, sub frame, that would be the support basis for the entire structure.

Unique glazing window frames allowed the glass to be set from the inside out, avoiding the problems of setting glass with a crane. Christmas lights from the City below helped maintain a cheery working environment for the crew of 5, even in the cold weather. In all, 6.5 tons of tempered and laminated glass graced this stout roof. A layer of dark tint was added to the outer pane to cut down sun glare, but still allow massive amounts of light. A good balance between heat and light was the goal.

The project was complete in less than a month.

Interior finishes were applied by the local contractor and the first event was held a week after the last piece of glass was set.  We definitely considered that a job well done! And it’s a rooftop conservatory we’re proud to put our name on.

We’ve seen numerous weddings and events at The Standard on the internet since the completion of the project and it appears that the goal was achieved by both the owners, and our conservatory crew.

With the addition of micro breweries and popular restaurants, downtown Rockford is paving the way to make it a fun and successful destination for any event.

Maybe you have a rooftop on your commercial property that could be transformed into a remarkable and useful area, that could be used year-round and in any weather?  Then give us a call at 888-345-7915 and we can discuss it, or you can contact us online too.

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