Weddingbee

Getting married out of the area caused a little bit of a hassle, but luckily we had scheduled a trip to visit Monterey (it was Mr. Lemon’s first time there) for my birthday only a few weeks after our engagement. We had to take care of quite a few things before we could physically visit locations:

1. Picking a Date
I guess I’d have to say that before we started looking for the site of our impending nuptials, we had to pick out possible dates for our wedding. You see, there are many EXTREMELY large events on the Monterey Peninsula during the summer that cause hotel rooms to disappear and allow small motels to charge $350/night on weekends. We didn’t want to cause any of our guests an enormous headache by scheduling our wedding on one of these weekends, so we went to the calendar and realized that from June to September we only had 3 weekends of choice. We prioritized July 7th as our key date, since we wanted to get married as close as we could to our parent’s anniversary date of July 4th and take advantage of the Wednesday holiday, and July 14th was our back-up.

2. Guest Lists from the Parents
We started making a list of people we knew we were going to invite so that we knew what venues would accommodate our guest lists. The guests are the most important part of our day, and we didn’t want to neglect family members or close friends because we found a really cool place to get married. So…. we came up with an estimate around 150 people… and kept that in mind as we started to look at venues.

3. Making a List and Checking it Twice
I immediately started emailing venues and asking for pricing information so that we could eliminate choices before we ever set eyes on them. I was able to gather most information before our trip, so I had prices and questions in hand before we walked around on our tours. I also started entering information into a large excel spreadsheet that calculated actual total cost of various scenarios at each of the venues. This was helpful, since you numbers look pretty on paper until you add in the 25% service charge.

4. Categorizing
The venues we were choosing from fell into two categories: OCEAN and COUNTRY/VALLEY (and some blended the two). We weren’t sure which one would sway us more, so we made sure to visit a representative group of both. We had a priority on anything near the water, but we knew that it might automatically lead to a bump in the price, so we kept some of the rest on the list.

We arrived in Monterey with information in hand, but we had one last BIG decision to make before we wandered around to visit the various venues:

5. CHURCH or NO CHURCH?
Mr. Lemon is Catholic, so if we were going to have a church ceremony we had essentially two venue choices.

a) Rosary Chapel - It’s on my gorgeous high school campus, my uncle helped to build it, and it’s the only church I ever really attended on a normal basis. The chapel seats 200 people, so it would fit our guests and then some. The fee for use is only $300, and the chances of a date being available were quite large since only alumnae are allowed to get married there.

b) Carmel Mission - The beautiful spot for almost all Catholic weddings on the Peninsula. The chapel only seats 75, so we would need to use the Basilica which is immense and seats 450 people. The fee for the service is $1800. There are three ceremonies each Saturday, the latest one being at 3pm… which would make an evening reception a bit of a hassle for our guests.

Once we drove onto the school grounds, Mr. Lemon’s mouth dropped, and when we were inside the chapel he just whispered, “Umm… how can we NOT get married here?” We never even made it over to the Mission, since the chapel was obviously my first choice, so with that settled, we now needed to find a venue for JUST a reception.

So… here’s a little bit about all of the venues we looked at and the choices we made:

CLUB DEL MONTE (Navel Postgraduate School), MONTEREY

PRO: Great per person price, large ballroom, just 0.5 miles away from the chapel
CON: Hard to decorate, need to get all guests security clearance to get on the base, only an afternoon reception time slot available

HIGHLANDS INN, CARMEL HIGHLANDS

PRO: Gorgeous location & great food
CON: The best view is for the ceremony…not in the ballrooms for dinner, Guest limit of 120

HOLMAN RANCH, CARMEL VALLEY

PRO: Beautiful grounds and both indoor/outdoor dining and dancing
CON: 30-45 minute drive through the country, $7-9k site rental fee

MISSION RANCH, CARMEL

PRO: A little bit of country & ocean
CON: High site rental fees, no food tastings, 96 guest limit on each barn for dinner, 8pm & 10pm curfews

PASADERA COUNTRY CLUB, HWY 68

PRO: Beautiful country view only a mile from my childhood home
CON: 20 minute drive away from Monterey, poor pricing schemes (everything was additional), 25% service charge

MONTEREY PLAZA HOTEL & SPA

PRO: Right on the water, Great food
CON: None of the ballrooms are actually on the water (you’d have to leave the room to see the bay), High site rental fees

MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM

PRO: My dream wedding spot!
CON: The pillars make everyone really separated from each other, no central dance area, bad for photos

After I dragged Mr. Lemon to each of these spots, we went home and made an unofficial list of our favorite spots, entered in all of the calculations into the Excel spreadsheet, and we came out with the best scenario: Our favorite venue was also one of the best priced choices!

And so, we picked our reception spot…

FERRANTES ROOM, MONTEREY MARRIOTT

PRO: Full windows on three sides of the room, Sits 160 max, great food, full view of the entire Monterey Bay, only 1 mile from the chapel
CON: Open bar prices & decorations cost

In the end, the view won out. We couldn’t stand inviting all of our friends to travel so far and skimp them on a view of the best attraction: the Monterey Bay. A lot of other locations would have been perfect if we were looking to have both a ceremony and our reception at the same spot, but the site fees priced them out of being reasonable for just a reception. Then again, we’re trying our best to keep to a $30,000 budget… and many of these locations would have cost around $50,000+ for the reception alone due to our guest list. It only took a weekend to make our decision, and we haven’t looked back at all… the view always wins me over!

• Weight Watchers Update
• Venue Type