Long time no see

"Why hello wedding venue. Long time no see." Eight months to be exact! We had not seen our venue since our first visit back in March. When we hit the six month mark it was time to meet with our venue and make some important decisions! It was just as beautiful as we remembered it.

 The entrance to our venue

The ceremony site from the walkway

 Cocktail area. Beautiful view of the surrounding mountains and the city below.

Inside the theater. They were preparing for a wedding that weekend.

It was so awesome being there again. And we had a very productive meeting. We made a lot of decisions including our food, linens and cake! When we left I couldn't help but feel like we had just gotten a lot accomplished! Wanna hear our menu??? Ok!

Hors D'oeuvres:
Coconut fried shrimp, Sun dried tomato, goat cheese and pesto pizza, and date rumaki. I didn't know what this was but Mr. Castle says it's amazing. It's an almond inside a date wrapped in bacon. He was trying to convince me before the meeting that we should get it, but from the description it didn't sound as appealing to me as some of the other options. The girl we were meeting with said that it was amazing, and that after one of their group tastings several brides changed their order to rumaki! I decided to compromise and let Mr. Castle have his way on this one. And now I can't wait to try it!

Buffet dinner:
Stuffed Chicken Breast, Smoked Tri-Tip, Sliced potatoes with parmesan and garlic cream (yum!), Asparagus, Mixed green salad, and Marinated tortillini salad.

And for our cake, (I'll have more on the design later) we are having banana cake with custard filling and cream cheese frosting. And for our second flavor, devils food cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting filling. I'm super excited about our cake! I can just taste it now...

Sorry if I made you hungry... Our meeting was at 10am and we discussed food last. By that point it was a little after non so we were starving! I think we made good decisions even though all our options sounded delicious at the time. The only downer about the food is that we won't be able to have a tasting. They do group tastings and we won't be in town for the next one. I have heard from many brides in reviews and from people who have attended weddings there (even some ladies here in the hive!) that their food is amazing, so I'm not too worried.

The aisle I will be walking down!

How long was the time between your first and second visit to your venue? Was it just as perfect as your remembered it? :)
All Photos are personal 

Where to say our I do's? Part 2!

I last left off in our story telling how we had visited three possible venues. All beautiful, but none stood out above the rest. So on we went to our fourth and final venue.

The Padua Hills Theater

The Padua Hills Theater was an actual working theater built in the 1920s. It was a Mexican dinner theater built to promote a relationship between the native Mexican people and new settlers.

Image via www.chantrellescatering.com

When Mr. Castle and I arrived we were greeted by one of the venues preferred photographers. I thought "Oh, what a coincidence, I wonder why he's here...?" It soon became clear after he spoke to us a bit, gave us his card and left, that he was there to meet us! That made us feel pretty special. We were then given a tour of the area outside the theater. We saw where the ceremony and cocktail hour would take place. It was very beautiful. They really set the mood with music playing out of speakers in the trees. It felt kind of like Disneyland... in a good way.

We then made our way inside and were brought into the theater, which has been converted into a banquet room. We walked into the room pictured below, minus the tables and chairs.

 Image via www.carolinetran.net/blog/ / Photography by Caroline Tran

This picture is beautiful but it doesn't even do it justice. We were floored. My eyes immediately began watering. I couldn't even speak I was so amazed at how breathtakingly beautiful this room was. And it used to be a theater! How perfect for Mr. Castle and I since theater is such a big part of our lives and what brought us together in the first place.

After we walked around the room a bit their preferred DJ, Entertainment Express, took over and gave us an awesome demo of what he could do with the venue's sound and lighting system. It once again took our breath away. They have a bubble machine for the first dance, spot lights for your grand entrance, and if you wanted they could make your reception look like you're in a club complete with lazers and strobe lights. 

We were there for about 2 hours, getting details and walking around. We left in a daze. We both obviously loved it, but it was way more expensive than the other venues. As we drove away I asked Mr. Castle what he was thinking. I expected his response to be, "Well it's great but for the price I don't know," or "Well if we win the lotto we can get married there." But surprisingly he said, "That's it. I mean, we have to get married there." I was shocked. I felt the same way but I didn't know if it was going to be possible.

So we went to talk to the man in charge, my Dad. He has amazingly offered to fund his only daughters wedding. We showed my him the info and prices we got from all the venues. We didn't push Padua, but we did tell him it was our favorite. We were very upfront and honest about the price differences. My Dad looked at us and said, "I think you should go with the place you love, you only get married once, hopefully," he laughed, "and I think you guys had a strong reaction to this place so go for it." 

So with his blessing and approval we made our choice! We can't wait to get married at the Padua Hills Theater!

Some more eye candy:

The Ceremony location

 

Image via www.chantrellescatering.com/ Photography by Enchanted Portraiture

Image via www.chantrellescatering.com/ Photography by Enchanted Portraiture

What it looks like at night!

Image via weddingchicks.com / Photography by Palos Studio

I'm so excited! I now see that if we had picked any of the other places, Padua would have always been in the back of our minds. Finding and finalizing our wedding venue was one of the most thrilling moments of this planning journey.


Any one else walk into your venue and get the feeling of, "Oh my gosh this is it!?" Did it work out for you?

Where to say our I do's? Part 1!

We knew right away we wanted to tie the knot in sunny Southern California close to all our families, but where? Mr. Castle and I both agreed we wanted to get married outdoors. Might as well take advantage of California's almost perfect weather. We also liked the idea of having the ceremony and reception at the same location. Coming from a Catholic family myself, I always hated the gap between getting from the church to the reception. We also were looking for a place that didn't need a lot of decorating. Meaning we wanted an space that was already beautiful on it's own, not a place we had to "dress up" with decorations or lighting. After a thorough search of all our options we came up with our four favorites. During a quick trip to California last March we visited them all in one day!


 The first possible venue we visited was Middle Ranch Lodge in Lake View Terrace California.

Image via Herecomestheguide.com/Photography by Bella Pictures

This place had a couple different locations for an outdoor ceremony. The reception would also take place outside, on the other side of the lodge. The awesome thing about this venue was they basically let you have the run of the place for your day to do whatever you want. They told us we could come do our rehearsal any time the week before, we could arrive however early the day of, and we could use the lodge in whatever way we wanted. I don't have a picture, but inside the lodge was a huge, beautiful stone fireplace. We imagined lining the mantel with our parents and grandparents wedding pictures...

The only down fall was the location. It is about an hour drive from where my family lives. It doesn't seem like much, but after a night of partying it might have been a little too far. There was also not many options for hotels in the area for any out of town guests.

We left with the feeling of, "Yeah, we could get married here." It was a good start to our day, but we still had three other places to visit! 

Next up was the Altadena Town and Country Club 

Image via Altaclub.com

We originally didn't want to look at country clubs, but the price and pictures from their website made us feel differently. They had two options for ceremony locations and reception banquet rooms. Both were stunning and beautiful. Each room had huge windows that looked out onto the mountains and club. The location was great, very central for both Mr. Castle's family and mine.

The downfalls with this venue were, for one, there could be two weddings going on at the same time. The rooms are right next to each other so I didn't really like that idea. They also make you pay for valet parking, even though the parking lot is right next to the club house... And they charged extra for things like nicer chairs and upgrading the decorations to the lovely way it is in all the pictures.

But with it's killer location and amazing views, it was still in the running. We then went straight to our third venue option. 

The Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens

Image via gggourmetgourmet.com

This place is literally about 5 minutes from where I grew up and I never knew it existed! Its a botanic garden that has only native California flowers and plants. It is very beautiful and the package this company was offering was amazing. Unfortunately as we drove up we both could feel it wasn't "the one." There was a huge hill guests would have to climb up before trekking to where our ceremony would be held. After the ceremony they would have to walk a ways over to the reception area. It just seemed like to much walking. Also the views in all the pictures show a beautiful field of flowers as the backdrop for the reception. What they don't show you is a very ugly and old building on the other side. It just didn't feel right. I know it probably looks gorgeous for weddings. The woman who was showing us around said they had just booked a wedding for the TV show, My fair wedding with David Tutera. I'm sure he'll make it beautiful, but like I said for us it wasn't "the one."

We made a quick stop for a Del Taco lunch before heading to our final venue. (I miss Del Taco so much since moving to NYC!) The last place we were visiting was my favorite from the photos, but also the most expensive. I knew we could get married at any of the places we had seen so far so I figured, in reality we were just going to look at the last venue just for fun...

The story of the final venue to coming up next! How many venues did you visit before making your decision?