Finding a Place to Have this Wedding Thing

Ok, time for some real talk - I did a TON of research on venues before we were engaged.  This probably doesn't come as a shock to a lot of you, but I still feel a touch embarrassed admitting this kind of thing.

But hey, the internet is the perfect place to post sort-of embarrassing things about yourself, right? Right.

The first thing we settled on, and one of the easiest decisions of the whole process, was our ceremony venue.  Daniel is Catholic, and a Catholic ceremony was important to him.  We wanted a church we felt some connection to, which brought us down to three choices - St. Lucy's in Campbell (close to our home, the church we attend the most regularly), St. Rose's in Roseville (where Daniel's Dad lives, and where he received his First Communion, went to Sunday school etc.  For non-Bay Area people, Roseville is a whopping three hour drive from us), and St. Mary's College Chapel in Moraga (my alma mater and a one hour drive from us).  St. Rose's was eliminated for distance, and St. Lucy's was considered but was so clearly out gunned by my beautiful alma mater...

My GORGEOUS school! GO GAELS!! Source

Getting married at Saint Mary's was the perfect way to incorporate both of us in the ceremony - Daniel's religion and my school.  And it's gorgeous.  And not everyone can get married there, only alum, faculty and staff, which I like because I'm difficult like that.  This decision limited our reception search to the East Bay. Onward!

So Daniel and I have A LOT of friends.  We are both social butterflies, and where I am terrible at keeping up with people, Daniel completely makes up for it with his ridiculous ability to maintain friendships.  This leads to A LOT of friends.  We host people at our house pretty regularly, and a typical group size is easily 30 people, and those are just the ones who show up and live in the area, not everyone who is invited.  A wonderful problem to have, I would like to think!  Between this and his large-ish family, I figured we could have as many as 250 - 300 people coming to this shindig.  No, I had not yet conceptualized how much that would cost.

But that's what I was starting with, along with a severe distaste for ugly ballroom carpets like so...

Ick. Source

And the knowledge that our preference of non-peak season dates along with our OCD tendencies (if we could worry about rain and bugs, we would worry about rain and bugs) would require an indoor venue.  And I googled.  I googled the shit out of bay area wedding venues. I spent copious time looking into every venue on WeddingWire and HereComestheGuide that was a remote fit, Yelp (just to see what came up), and just The Internets at large.  I even went as far as to request information from a couple of places before we got engaged (in my defense, it was at the urging of my own mother - she thought it was a good idea to gather information early!).  

I eliminated venue after venue... because I didn't like the layout, or the space was only large enough in an outdoor area, or I asked for pricing and the minimums were in the $20,000 range.  And then I was left with one....

The Bridges Golf Club in San Ramon.

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We were still looking at a 20 minute drive, but for Bay Area standards that is almost nothing.  I liked the look of it, I liked the view, I liked that there were no carpets,

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I liked that the food sounded good, and I liked that there was a cool tunnel to take photos in!

Guys!! A tunnel!!!! Source

Now let's just take a moment to remember I'm not even engaged at this point.  But don't worry guys, 'cuz I found the perfect wedding venue (please hear my sarcasm through the screen!!).

Le sigh.  I was officially a crazy, wedding-obsessed chick.  But the good news is all this prior research came in handy when we were officially engaged and we realized we had to get a move on on picking a venue.

I presented my argument for why The Bridges was the best to Daniel, and although I was really worried it would be out of our price range he encouraged me to call and make us an appointment.  So off we went! It was just as beautiful in person, and the pricing ended up being surprisingly reasonable for everything that was included!  The space, servers, bartenders, food and beverage packages with a nice range of options and lots of customization available, standard linens and an event captain.

My mom had some major sticker shock when I explained the pricing to her, so we briefly visited one other local restaurant that we could have bought out for the evening.  That visit sealed the deal for The Bridges, because the restaurant so clearly couldn't compare even with the higher price point.

So that was that!*

Did anyone else basically have this stuff figured out before they got engaged? (Please say yes so I feel less crazy!!!!)


*Sort of.  In full disclosure, we are those people who read through all the minutia of contracts and email long lists of questions before signing anything, so it took some back and forth before it was that I guess.