Wedding Venue Hunt Part 1

Before we decided on our friends' backyard for our wedding, we decided to check out some of our other options.  I figured it would be useful for anyone else planning a budget wedding in San Diego to write about what we discovered.  To be honest our search wasn't terribly extensive, just because we finally saw the backyard and decided it was just meant to be!

So here's probably the most important thing we discovered on our hunt for a venue: holding your reception at a restaurant is an amazing budget-friendly option.  Therefore we looked at a lot of restaurants in San Diego.  The problem, however, is that most restaurants cannot host the ceremony AND the reception.  But having your reception at a restaurant means you are almost guaranteed to have amazing food and a fun atmosphere.

Anyways, here is one of the first restaurants we checked out...and one that was a major contender:

Bleu Boheme in Kensington

The Bleu Boheme is extremely French countryside chic and extremely delicious.  It is gorgeous on the inside, full of chalkboards and candlelight. 

Pros:
Affordable (as long as you don't have it on a Saturday night)- It would have been a little over $5,000 to have it during the day on a Saturday.
Beautiful interior
Delicious French food
Great Kensington location
Chalkboard wall!!  How great would this wall be to set up a photo booth in front of?  Guests could write fun messages on the board for you and then take a picture for your guestbook.

Cons:
No outdoor area, which I suppose would have been fine since it would have to be during the day anyways in the middle of July, but I've always imagined an outdoor wedding since San Diego has the best warm summer nights.  Which brings me to the next con...
Daytime wedding- along with the aforementioned, the amazing candles throughout the restaurant wouldn't be as romantic
No area for dancing or a DJ
No room for a ceremony

If we had gone with this venue, I took this picture for a French countryside-inspired table setting:

(Source Unknown)

While we were considerably leaning towards this venue...the cons just outweighed the pros and I felt like we were settling. 



Save the Date sneak peek

Okay, I know I just wrote a post, but I'm too excited about our Save the Dates to not show you all a sneak peek! 

Unfortunately, I won't be able to show more or explain more until I actually send them out in January.  Obviously I still want to keep some sort of element of suprise!  But Matt and I had a lot of fun hiking Mission Trails in Tierrasanta with my maid/matron of honors Brittany and Vicky!  Lots of laughter and lots of amazing pictures.  So stay tuned!

"Will you be my bridesmaid?" signs

As you all may recall, I was deathly ill by the time our trip to Orlando was over.  So sick in fact, I had to miss work for a few days.  But being me I couldn't just do lay in bed and not do anything since I was so excited to jump start my wedding planning!  So I decided to make my cute signs that asked my friends if they wanted to be my bridesmaids.

This was my first DIY wedding project and it was quite easy.  I simply uploaded a bunch of photos of me and that particular bridesmaid  onto Costco.com and used their collage feature to display the pictures!  Easy peasy.  And it was probably about $5 for all the signs.

Here's Lindsey displaying her sign after she got it in the mail:

Super cute right?

I will now take this opportunity to introduce the girls who are literally my backbone to this wedding craziness!

First up, we have Vicky, my maid of honor!

My matron of honor, Brittany!!

And my bridesmaids...





Lindsey

Adrienne (with her son and our ring bearer, Derek)

And Erika!

Alright so that's it!  I'm so sorry I've neglected this blog the last few weeks.  I've been so busy at the bank and job hunting!  Hopefully next week I can write a few posts about our different vendor searches!

Yes to the Dress

Today I have a fun post for you guys!  Dress shopping!

I went dress shopping on a Sunday at the beginning of October.  I wasn't expecting to find anything.  My mom and I stopped in at Prevue one day when we were shopping just to have a look around.  The girl that helped us said that it can take up to 6 months to order a dress!  Of course I freaked out since my wedding at the point was only 9 months away and I needed time for alterations.  So we decided we needed to start looking for dresses and we made an appointment to come back the following weekend. 

I was really nervous to start dress shopping for some reason.  But what ended up happening?  I found THE dress in under 2 hours of dress shopping.  To this day, it still blows my mind.   I had my mom, my aunt, my cousin, and my future mother-in-law all there with me.  It was really amazing to have all the women in my family with me as I looked for a dress.  Looking back on it, I don't know why I was nervous at all.  I feel so truly blessed about how wonderful that day actually was.

I started looking at dresses online to try and get an idea of what I wanted before my appointment.  But I didn't care for much that I saw.  However, I did fall in love with one dress...and to be perfectly honest I walked into Prevue thinking it would be "the one".

(source)

That was the first dress I tried on and it made my mom cry.  I felt really overwhelmed after trying on this first dress.  I think my expectations were too high since I loved it so much on the internet.  And although it's a gorgeous dress, I felt like it didn't fit quite right on me:

I'm starting to think that it's smarter to just not have any idea what kind of dress you want and just go in and try different styles.  A lot of women I have talked to say that they ended up with a dress that's completely different than what they expected.  As shown in my next dress...although I was partial to ball gowns at the time, I decided to try a different style dress: A more fitted A-line style.  I pulled this dress off the sales rack.  It was dirt cheap and I was blown away by how well it fit my body:

Although I was tempted by the price tag, I wasn't crazy about the sequin uniboob.  Although when I show people all the dresses I tried on, pretty much everyone thinks this is the dress I ended up getting! But alas, this dress just didn't do it for me.  But it did make me realize I needed to let go of my ball gown dream, and go for this style of dress!

The third dress I tried on was one that the salesgirl picked for me.  It gave me an idea of another style of dress, but it was onw of my least favorite of all the dresses I tried on:

The 4th dress I tried on was so bad I took it off right away so I have no pictures of it.  I don't even remember what it looks like!  The 5th dress I tried on was also really, really pretty.  And it was seriously so close to being it!

I loved the simple elegance of it.  But it fit a little funky around my waste.  I'm sure a little alterations would easily fix the problem.  However, for some reason the first dress and the second dress was still in the back of my mind.  I just wanted a dress that I loved as much as the first one, but that fit me as well as the second one!

The salesgirl brought me in another dress to try on.  To be perfectly blunt, I hated it on the hanger.  Absolutely loathed it.  My mom and I laughed to each other saying "What was she thinking?"  I almost didn't even try it on!!  But I decided to cover all my bases and try it anyways.  We were nearing the end of our dress shopping, so what could it hurt?  As I started putting the dress on and they were lacing me up...my love grew for this dress that I originally hated!  It was the first dress I actually said that I loved and I knew I just had to have it!

So that's my story about how I found my dress in 2 hours!  I'm not going to post a picture of my dress for obvious reasons.  You all just have to wait with Matt!

The Beginning...

Hi everyone! I decided it was about time I started a wedding blog since people always like hearing about my planning adventures.

I've already gotten a ton of stuff done on my wedding to-do list and I'm dying to share everything with you! But I thought it would be better to start from the beginning of my wedding planning process.

As most of you know, Matt proposed to me in Orlando at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

(us in front of Hogwarts)

Unfortunately, toward the end of our trip, I got really sick with one of the worst colds of my life! But being forced to stay in bed allowed me to start looking at inspiration boards from Snippet & Ink. I showed Matt a plethora of wedding inspiration boards that I liked and he simply had to say "yay" or "nay". To my dissapointment, he absolutely hated all the inspiration boards that involved one of my favorite wedding colors...peach! But he loved everything that involved green. And since I have a soft spot in my heart for all things black and white (penguins included), we both fell in love with the following two inspiration boards:

(Source)

Therefore, I present to you our official wedding colors:

Black, White, and Green...with hints of yellow!

And for the feel of the wedding, we're going for a simple elegant backyard soiree. We want our wedding to be the party of the century where people can let loose and have a good time!

Stay tuned for my next post about our many issues about our budget, and how we plan on having a wedding in San Diego for no more than $12,000. (Yes, I did just type 12 and not 21!)