Katie Painter couldn’t wait to get married. But COVID meant she had no choice but to wait. Still, she was intent on getting married at the place she had her heart set on, even if it meant waiting a full year to walk down the aisle at the barn at the Venues at Langtree.

“Our original date was December 5, 2020 and we had to push it back a year so we eloped, but then we always knew we were going to do it again and we knew we wanted to have it at the place we’d originally picked.”

Painter met her fiancé when the two worked at the same grocery store in high school. 

“I saw him one time and I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's the cutest boy I've ever seen." So I decided to talk to him and we talked at orientation, but then I never saw him. We worked in a gigantic grocery store called Wegmans, which are up north, and one night the fire alarm went off because there was a gas leak. So all the employees had to go under a lamp post so they could make sure we were alive and well, and he was there. So I went up to him, started talking to him, and then eventually we had to go back inside to finish our jobs, and so I wrote my number on a sub wrapper, because I made sub sandwiches, and I went through his line and I gave him my number. And the rest is history.”

The couple has been together ever since and Katie says they spent years talking about their wedding so it had to be perfect.

They toured a number of places in the Charlotte area before choosing The Venues and Langtree, and Painter says they truly never considered any place else.

“This was the best location we toured by far,” Painter remembers.

She and her fiancé grew up in Northern Virginia and they wanted to have their wedding somewhere that reminded them of home.

“We definitely wanted more of a remote country feel. We like the estate look and the rolling hills and the farms. There's a lot of that up north and you don't see that as much around here. So this was definitely a hidden gem,” Painter says of the Mooresville, North Carolina venue.

But they had a lot of out- of town guests coming and still needed to make sure they picked a place that was easily accessible.

“We wanted to be close to Charlotte because we knew that was going to be near the airport, and a lot of our guests would be coming in that way. That way it gave our guests options to kind of get there. A couple of the venues we considered were a little too far out in the country. It would just be really hard to travel. This was just the perfect sweet spot for everything.”

Many of their guests stayed at hotels just a few minutes from the Venues at Langtree and got a fun surprise when their ride showed up.

“One of the most fun parts of the wedding was the trolley because how cool is it when your guests are waiting to come to the venue, and they have no idea, and this big white, beautiful trolley pulls up and they all get on. It's a very classy way to travel to the venue.”

Once on site, the guests didn’t have to leave the property but still got to enjoy several different settings. Painter and her groom loved the idea of using different backdrops for each part of the wedding but being able to stay in one location.

“It had the right amount of space, because we were aiming for 150 guests, and having the three different spaces is a huge deal. It doesn't get boring, like staying in one spot the entire time. So we were able to move from the barn for our ceremony to the Boulder Room for our cocktail hour and then to the pavilion for our reception,” she says.

And like every bride, she was most concerned about having the perfect photos to remember the day.

“I just wanted good places for pictures, because that is the whole thing. That's the only thing you can take away from the day is pictures, so there's a lot of good places around here that have pictures!”

Katie says she loved getting married in the barn for that reason. “It's so pretty. There was minimal work done inside because it already has so much natural beauty. And I love standing in front of the cross. I had a Christmas wedding, so there was a lot of garland, a lot of ribbon. It was just really special and it's so cozy in there, but there's so much room. It's just amazing, and walking down the aisle, it's like the perfect length. It's just incredible.”

She says the pavilion offered stunning pictures as well.

“It was just gorgeous. I mean there were lights dangling from the ceiling. They had huge Christmas trees that were all lit up for us. So again, we had to do like just a few things for the table scape, but besides that, there was nothing to decorate because it's already so beautiful in there.”

Katie says everything ran so smoothly that she and her groom were able to just relax and enjoy the night. And they definitely did!

“One of my favorite parts of the day was one of our groomsmen started a conga line. So everyone joined in, all the guests, all the wedding party, and he actually carried the whole conga line outside. So there's tons of pictures and videos of us with this huge hundred person conga line going in and outside!”

The Venues at Langtree in Mooresville, North Carolina is home to more than 26,000 square feet and five different venue spaces that can accommodate events like large weddings, private parties, corporate retreats and intimate gatherings with both indoor and outdoor options. Also coming later this year, an additional half acre of outdoor space.