5 Historic Spots to Say ‘I Do’ in Florida
By Jodi Mailander Farrell
For those of you who want to celebrate your wedding with a big bash, here are five luxurious destination wedding sites around the state with pasts and settings worthy of your historic event.
The Biltmore, 1200 Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables
Historic host to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland and Bing Crosby, this Jazz Age icon is an elegant 1926 Mediterranean hotel with hand-painted frescos on barrel-vaulted ceilings, travertine floors, marble columns, leaded glass fixtures, carved mahogany furnishings and lavish gardens. A testimony to lasting beauty, it’s a designated National Historic Landmark.
Hemingway Home and Museum, 907 Whitehead St., Key West
The tropical garden of the historic home, where Hemingway lived from 1931 to 1939, is the perfect setting for a storybook wedding. After all, Ernest Hemingway enjoyed romance so much that he was married four times. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author did some of his best work here, including “To Have and Have Not.”
The Breakers, One South County Rd., Palm Beach
The Don CeSar, 3400 Gulf Blvd., St. Pete Beach
The Ringling, 5401 Bay Shore Rd., Sarasota
Think Gatsby. The 1920s-era estate of circus barons John and Mable Ringling is rich in architecture and history, with its stunning Museum of Art. Large groups have ample space to celebrate in its courtyard, graced with replicas of ancient Greek, Roman and Baroque statues. Other venues include a rose garden, a banyan grove and the mansion’s bay-front Ca’ d’Zan Terrace, where Ringling himself threw countless parties.