Wedding Wednesdays - Part 5 | Picking a Venue

Somehow Wedding Wednesday turned into Wedding Thursday this week, and I have no excuse other than I lost track of what day of the week it is. Oh the joys of working from home...anyways...on to the post!

The hardest part about wedding planning for me so far has been finding the perfect venue and setting the wedding date. The venue changed locations in my mind about 5 times, mostly because the longtime dream wedding that I had in mind since before I even met my future husband just wasn't practical. But those fairy tale ideas never really are, right? So once that idea got the axe, it became a little easier to narrow things down. Here's how it all went down...

Quite a few years ago (long before I met Blake) I went to Paso Robles with my mom and friend Chef Debbi and we went to the Santa Margarita Ranch. While we were there, they were starting to set up for a wedding and ever since then, I have had that venue in the back of my mind. The idea of getting married in a barn really appeals to me. It's very county, somewhat casual and sounds like a the type of place where everyone could really have a blast. Here is a photo of the inside of the Santa Margarita Ranch's barn:

Photographed by the talented Cameron Ingalls

Once I was looking at pictures of different barn venues, I realized it could be a very elegant wedding, too. Barns have lots of potential. So, when we got engaged my first thought was a barn wedding. Blake and I love Paso Robles and wineries/wine, too, so it seemed like a perfect choice! Right?

Well, it didn't really work out that way. First of all, we want to have our wedding in summer after the schools get out for break since Blake is going to be a teacher and we want to be able to get away for our anniversary every year. Unfortunately, my cousin Kelly, who is one of my bridesmaids (and is more like a little sister to me than just a cousin) is having a major spine surgery this summer at the end of June. So our window of time to schedule the wedding was narrowed down to pretty much two weekends in June, since Kelly will be down and out all summer.

As I started contacting the winery wedding venues in Paso Robles, I was basically laughed at because everything for this summer, especially June, is (of course) already booked. As if I thought I could get a venue within a year prior to the wedding date! What was I thinking?? Granted, if I was a little more flexible about the months, maybe I could have had a wedding in a Paso winery this fall or winter, but that just wasn't an option for us. Blake will be student teaching this Fall and will absolutely not be able to take any time off. So we definitely wouldn't be able to have a honeymoon right after getting married. Plus, we will be strapped for cash big time and that just isn't the right time to have a wedding.

After a lot of talking and decision making, we decided that having a wedding in the summer was more important to us than the location itself. But at this time, I was still stuck on the idea of having the wedding in summer of this year, 2014. So, I expanded my search to locally near home in Orange County. Not only because of the scheduling problem, but we were also reminded by a friend that this would technically be a "destination" wedding, even though it's only 4 hours from home. It would require everyone getting a hotel room and traveling for the weekend. It would cost everyone more money and some people would be less likely to show up. That was the real deal-breaker for me. The idea that some of our friends or family wouldn't show up to our wedding made me want to cry, and the last thing I would ever want to do is burden them financially. At the end of the day, all we really want is for everyone we love to be in one place, celebrating and dancing and drinking and laughing with us. One big love-fest. So, it was decided, definitively, to make the wedding local.

There are only a few venues locally that have this same rustic, barn-like feel. There's Strawberry Farms in Irvine, but we both know people who have gotten married there already and we want to be unique. It's also out of our budget anyway. My search led me to many different rustic options, most of them in the Inland Empire which I wasn't crazy about. At this point I can't even remember all the places I looked at and contacted. All booked. All not quite right.

Then, I was struck with a bolt of genius and had a big "no duh" moment. Right across the street from our apartment in Huntington Beach is an old historic house that has been turned into a museum called the Newland House. Behind it is the Newland Barn and it is absolutely adorable. When I say that it is right across the street from our apartment, I mean pretty much literally. It's a 5-minute walk away. How I never considered this location from day one is beyond me. I think maybe because the inside of the barn is basically a rec-room and not big enough for the reception, it didn't really dawn on me. But having the wedding completely outside is more of the feel I want, anyway. Having the barn as the backdrop would be good enough! They also have an amazing water tower and those big bistro lights, which are my favorite thing ever.

Here's a link to a full wedding to see more pictures of the venue if you're interested: Newland Barn Wedding

It's hard to explain how much I fell in love with this venue right off the bat. I was absolutely convinced that this was the place. Guess what? It wasn't. But, falling in love with this location did get me to open up to the idea of not having the wedding this summer, because they (of course) were booked. This particular venue also had a different policy for booking. It is part of the Huntington Beach parks system, so you book the venue at city hall. They take reservations up to exactly one year prior to your event, and if more than one person shows up on that day, they do a lottery to decide who gets the venue. So, if I wanted to book a wedding for June 21st, 2014 (for example), I would have to be there at 8am on June 21st, 2013.

After a lot more discussing and driving by the location at least 25 times in about 3 days, we decided the value was there (did I mention it was dirt cheap, about the same price as renting out a park??), the location was perfect, and I guess we can wait until summer 2015. It wasn't ideal, but what's another year, right? We live together already, we already feel married, and this would give me a TON of time to plan (and lose weight!). No matter where we wanted to have the wedding, if it wasn't in a family member's backyard, summer 2014 was just too soon, and too complicated.

It was decided: Newland Barn it is! By this time it was the beginning of February of this year (did I mention all this back-and forth occurred within a matter of two weeks of getting engaged?) and I started to look at next year's calendar. The next available Saturday of next year would be Valentine's Day and I thought maybe that would be a cute idea. Sure, we wanted to get married in summer, but Valentine's Day would be just one year from now instead of a year and a half... so why not? Blake would be done student teaching by then...so why not? Sure, he wouldn't have time off every year...but why not do it anyway?

The great thing about this place (which came in handy later) is that they have a change date/cancellation fee of only $15. So, there really isn't a lot of pressure when booking it. If you change your mind, you're only out 15 bucks. And we booked it. On this past Valentine's Day 2014, Blake, my mom, and I booked the venue for next year, Valentine's Day 2015. I really had every intention of trying to change the date to summer 2015, but I wanted to make sure I had some date locked in, just in case I never won the wedding lottery this summer. I felt really good about everything...great even! Then dad went into full-blown-up-all-night-call-in-sick-to-work-the-next-day-from-lack-of-sleep-panic-mode.

What I failed to mention is that they don't allow tents on the grounds in case of rain. If it rains, you can try to squeeze as many people as possible into the ugly rec-room barn, but basically you're just out of luck and getting rained on. Now, we're in Huntington Beach and it rains about 3 times a year, maybe. But according to my dad's up-all-night research, February is the wettest time of year, statistically speaking. Even though I was planning on moving the date anyway, dad was still picturing me sobbing on my wedding day as the El Nino, mother of all storms, ruined my wedding day. And of course, he had a point. Booking a venue in February with no shelter from rain is beyond sketchy.

Even though I was planning on moving the date to summer, I started thinking of all the times it has rained in June. I remember specifically in middle school and high school (during an El Nino trend), it rained on the last day of school in June for about three or four years in a row. And not to mention June gloom. At this point I was thinking June 2015 for the wedding. This venue is about 2 miles from the shore in Huntington Beach and June is always overcast, drizzly, cold and windy. So not what we want for our wedding! We want warm summer night, dancing under the stars, not bundle up in blankets and shiver under an outdoor heater. Well, it's not what I want anyway. Blake would be perfectly happy getting married in a blizzard on an outdoor ice rink! Reluctantly, I started my venue search all over again.

Can you see how all this drama could get to a person? It was starting to become too much for me and the idea of eloping was now seriously on the table. If I didn't think it would break my dad's heart not to be able to walk me down the aisle, we just might have done it.

Somehow (and I truly don't even remember where I saw this place in my tenth time around searching for a venue) I found the Heritage Museum of Orange County. The Newland House is a big, white, amazing looking Victorian house and they have a museum inside, but no one is allowed inside on the day of the wedding (you aren't even supposed to go on the porch for photos). I think that's why the Heritage Museum caught my eye. It's like the Newland House on steroids. Not only is there a big, white, amazing looking Victorian house with a museum inside, but we get to use it on the day of the wedding! The bride and her bridesmaids get to get dressed inside before the wedding, and for a minimal fee, we get to have the museum opened up to our guests during the cocktail hour between the ceremony and reception while we're off taking pictures. I am OVER THE MOON about this place. Thank goodness dad freaked out about there being no contingency for rain at the Newland Barn! Here is their Facebook page with pictures of the venue.

So, not only do they have the big white house/museum that we get to use, but the whole place is HUGE. There are TWO big houses, a gorgeous shaded gazebo area for the ceremony, a covered reception area with dance floor (hello rain protection!!), and an entire rustic/old west area with so many photo ops it makes my head spin. They even have a blacksmith shop, mining shaft, and covered wagon. I don't want to go into too many details about the venue itself because you really have to see it to believe it. I want people to be just as excited as I was the first time I saw it in person, but here are some of my favorite photos of the venue: (photos by The Willinghams)

Are you dying? I'm dying. I can't get over this place. When we were there it just felt so much more "wedding-y" than the other places that we've been. They are so much more equipped for weddings than the Newland Barn. They have a set caterer and rental company. They have a list of preferred vendors to help us plan all the other aspects of the wedding. And I can still decorate and plan stuff in a DIY fashion.

Very long, dramatic story short... we booked it. They were just about completely open all of summer 2015, so we somewhat randomly chose 7-11 because it's memorable and we will always be able to get free Slurpees on our anniversary! haha! So that's it. That's the story. We have our venue. We have our date. I have about 50 new grey hairs, but it's done. It's set. And it's not changing! Now I get to have fun and start planning all the other stuff and have the whole wedding planning experience that I imagined for the last ten years of my life! Everything works out for a reason, and I really couldn't see us getting married in a better place.

Here's to Jamie + Blake, 7-11-15!

[ j. ]