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!