Beautiful nearby venues to borrow for a wedding

Picture this: An afternoon wedding under a vine-draped white pergola, set against a lush green carpet of grass and foliage on a broad riverfront sloping down to dark, rippling waters. After the ceremony, your guests retire to the beautifully appointed foyer of the historic mansion for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Finally, you all drift into the ballroom for an evening of dining and dancing.

Or this: An exchange of vows on a magnificent stretch of pale, tide-lapped sand as the sun sets and the sky unveils its evening splendor. Afterward, your guests take a short twilight stroll down the boardwalk or hop a street trolley to a quaint Victorian inn for a gourmet dinner by candlelight.

Not what you had in mind? Then imagine this: A simple wedding in a park or museum on the Fourth of July, followed by an "intimate" evening of fireworks and a free concert shared with a few thousand of your closest friends along a parkway.

Whatever your style, if you are considering a "destination" wedding, just remember, the Greater Philadelphia area is a "destination." Together, the city, nearby Bucks County, Lancaster County, and New Jersey Shore towns such as Cape May offer museums, landmarks, inns, mansions, wineries, farms, and anything in between.

Bucks County

For their wedding and reception for 180 guests on June 3, Laura Myers Puglisi, 26, an occupational therapist from Bucks County, and Brian Puglisi, 30, a pharmacist from Northeast Philadelphia, chose the Delaware River vista offered by the Pen Ryn Estate in Bensalem.

"Everybody loved it, loved, loved it," the bride said. "The view is incredible. Boats were going by. We had amazing weather. Everybody said it was so serene."

Laura Puglisi had worked at Pen Ryn several years ago and, after rejecting more-exotic venues, thought it would be "the ideal place for a wedding."

"I wanted a destination wedding, like going-to-an-island destination wedding," she said. "After we talked about who was going to be able to be there, we realized it would be too many people that we would alienate, who would not be able to take a flight somewhere."