Venue Found!

As in "Paradise Found"?  Anyone?  Crickets...

Okay, so, I've strung this out enough.  After weighing all the options, and driving by a few more venues on my spreadsheet that we hadn't set appointments for, I narrowed it down to El Dorado Golf Course and the Red Horse Barn.  My mom came to visit the following weekend, and one of the many tasks on our wedding-related agenda was finalizing the venue choice.  So with her and Jeff in tow, we checked out both of these.  And the clear winner was...

Red Horse Barn!  This was a surprise to me, as I thought my mom would go for the more traditional (and more convenient and more affordable) El Dorado.  But I think she saw how happy Red Horse Barn made me.  As soon as we drove up, I had an insta-smile plastered on my face.  Jeff really liked it too--he thought it was more "us".  And you know what?  He was totally right.  El Dorado is a great venue, and I could easily see getting married there.  But when I think of that venue, I think of a beautiful wedding.  When I think of Red Horse Barn, I think of MY beautiful wedding.  See the difference?  And it ended up being really important to both of us that this not feel like a cookie-cutter movie wedding.

Just for funsies, let's look at some more pictures of RHB, shall we?

This is the front porch of the entrance/sitting room

The inside of the sitting room.  That's me looking really confused, though I'm not sure why.  Maybe contemplating whether I'd be able to use the fireplace in July? (It's an awesome fireplace!  A girl can dream!)

A partial view of the courtyard, with the stables behind.  Real stables, with horses!  How cool is that?

A side view of the gazebo.  They were setting up for a wedding, so you can see how it would look.

I love the twinkle lights on this tree.  Sadly, our reception will be over before dark so we won't get much use out of them.

This is a really charming venue with lots of character and endless possibilities for decor and setting the right vibe.  We booked it and, yes, I cringed a little when my mom signed the deposit check, but I knew I would make up the cost somewhere else.  And, helpfully, our caterer of choice was trés affordable:

And trés chic, non?  That's right friends, we are having the In-N-Out truck cater the wedding!  This was Jeff's idea, and his one serious request for the wedding.  And to be perfectly honest, as soon as he suggested it I knew we had to do it.  We are not stuffy people, and while we appreciate really good food, we also appreciate really good greasy cheesy beefiness.  And remember that backyard-picnic feel we were going for?  This takes that to a whole 'nother level.  My parents took some serious convincing--my dad, especially, was afraid it would look cheap.  He may be right, but honestly I don't care.  It IS cheap, but more importantly it's something Jeff and I both love and are excited about having at our wedding.

So, there you have it: the big mystery of why we HAD to have a venue that would let us bring in our own "caterer".  We're going the untraditional route, and we couldn't be happier about it.

The Search for the Perfect Venue, Part 3

Where last we left off, I had fallen in love with a venue out of my price range and ruled out one that was a little too traffic-adjacent for my taste.

The next venue was at another golf course (what can I say, Southern California is heavy on golf courses!).  We were early for our appointment, so my sister and I decided to poke around on our own.  The course was amazing, and they were setting up for a wedding later in the day, so we were able to see where the ceremony would take place.  I didn't take any pictures here either, but here are some from the interwebs:

I was really into this location, with one major exception: it's located very close to the Long Beach City airport, and in the 15 or so minutes we were outside, no fewer than 3 planes passed overhead, and were so loud that we could hardly talk to each other while they passed.  I had immediate anxiety about having to pause our ceremony ten times for planes to pass, and I just could not handle that kind of stress.  So we called the coordinator to cancel our appointment, and moved on to our last venue.

The last stop for the day was the El Dorado Golf Course in Long Beach--yes, another one.  And no, Jeff and I do not golf.  But that's kinda beside the point here.

El Dorado was also really pretty and, while I remembered to take pictures, I don't think they show it to its best advantage.  Still, here are a couple, just to give an idea of the space:

The ceremony would take place on the lawn on the edge of the course, and the reception would be under these gorgeous white tents adjoining the ceremony space.  Those poles at the top of the tent are strung with vines and twinkle lights, and the venue would provide some decorations for the reception, as well as all of the tables and chairs.  They had their own caterer on site, and the price was really very reasonable, especially if we got married on a Sunday.  However, we had other plans for a caterer (I promise I will get to that soon) so this was not necessarily a plus for us, since we wouldn't be able to go with an outside vendor.

So let's sum up what we had after four venues and serious patience on the part of my saintly sister:

• 1 venue with the rush of traffic going by the ceremony site
• 1 gorgeous stable that was out of our price range
• 1 heartbreakingly beautiful golf course where no one would be able to hear our vows
• 1 very nice and affordable tented venue with too many restrictions

Hang in there, in my next post I'll reveal our final choice, as well as the big caterer mystery.

The Search for the Perfect Venue, Part 2

Once I realized that there wasn't going to be any easy solution to the venue problem (the park didn't work, we don't belong to a church, and none of our nearby family has a backyard big enough for the size of wedding we'd be having), I got serious about my internet venue research.  My favorite sites were Here Comes the Guide and Gathering Guide.  While they didn't have the greatest sorting features, they offered pretty thorough lists of all the venues in our area.

I played around on these websites for days on end, and finally took my favorites and input them into one of my infamous spreadsheets.  No, not spreadsheet...workbook.  I'm talking 10 spreadsheets in a document, outlining pricing, rental tiems available, even how much I liked the coordinators I talked to on the phone.  Oh, sorry, you didn't know I'm a total nerd?  Consider yourself informed.  Moving right along...

I scheduled a day with my amazingly patient sister/MOH to look at four of the front runners on my spreadsheet.  And yes, she laughed at me when I showed this to her.  And yet she agreed to come along anyway.

At the first venue we went to, I failed to take any pictures, mostly because I was pretty underwhelmed.  It was at a beautiful golf course (score!) but the ceremony would have to take place on the front lawn of the country club, seriously less than 20 yards from a pretty major road.  And, ok, I'm really bad at judging distance, so if 20 yards is actually really far, just humor me.  Believe me when I say it was thisclose to lots and lots of traffic.

The second venue we saw was actually my least favorite on paper.  It was at an equestrian center in the courtyard of a stable.  I grew up around horses and have no problem being around them, but I was afraid of smelling them during dinner.  However, when we showed up, I was completely wowed by this place.  First of all, it looked like this:

There was definitely no hint of horse smell, even with horses so close.  It was the perfect size for our estimated guest list (around 150--I have a very large family), and best of all we could bring in our own caterer.  This would prove very important, as I'll get into later.  The downside?  The cost.  The space fee wasn't astronomical, but it was pretty high considering we would have to bring everything in ourselves, from food and alcohol to tables, chairs, and dishes.  That plus the already high cost of the venue itself added up to significantly more than I had budgeted and would make the rest of wedding planning pretty difficult.

So, with one venue I just couldn't use, and one I loved but couldn't afford, we still had two more to go.  Potential venues three and four up next...

The Search for the Perfect Venue, Part 1

Clearly, as the last post and subsequent disappearance indicate, I became consumed with wedding planning.   From the day I pored over magazines and began forming ideas of what I wanted our wedding to look like, I've become a woman obsessed.  I'm going to attempt to fill in the gaps from then to now with a series of posts highlighting the major ups and downs of the planning process so far.

To appease everyone's curiosity, we had to set a date for the wedding ASAP.  When I asked Jeff, he said he wanted to get married the following summer.  Okay, done.  It was a little less than a year from the time he proposed, and that seemed like a decent amount of time to plan a semi-casual, not-too-big wedding.  We ruled out June, because his brother was supposed to come back from Afghanistan at the end of June and we really, REALLY wanted him to be there (more on that later).  That left July or August...the final decision would rest on the venue's availability.  Which, of course, led to us actually having to find a venue.

We both agreed that we wanted the wedding to feel like a backyard picnic.  Whereas I envisioned an elegant affair with a laid-back vibe, Jeff envisioned this:

This is a park in Long Beach that is sometimes used for birthday parties, large work-related gatherings, etc. etc.  This was Jeff's idea for the venue.  Honestly, I was just glad to have him brainstorming at this point and, to be fair, the park itself is absolutely gorgeous.

See what I mean?  Very pretty.  And if I could have somehow sectioned the park part off from the tables-and-snack-bar part, I think the venue search may very well have been over.  However,  I just couldn't get over the vibe that the picnic tables set...I know the photo doesn't show it well, but the concrete was cracked, the lighting was bad, and there was an awkwardly-placed stage behind it all.  Not to mention the fact that it was situated directly behind WalMart and the guests would have to drive through a maze of overflowing dumpsters to get to the wedding.  Overall it was not the look I was going for.  And I felt like a total diva bride for saying so, but somehow I had actually managed to from an idea of what I wanted for the wedding, and this venue just didn't jive with it.

So, one venue down, on to the next.  Part 2 of the venue search coming soon...