Weddingbee Blog

So we’re engaged. What to do next?

I wasn’t a girl with a wedding addiction since age 5—no wedding binder, no pre-engagement wedding blog addiction (I’m making up for it now) no ring, dress, or invitation suite ALREADY picked out.

Oh hell no. source

So it took just a minute for me to be up to speed and start figuring things out. Being obsessed with all things design/crafty I immediately thought of save-the-dates and invites, and then realized we’d have to have some information to put on those bad boys.

Like a date. Simple enough. And a city. LA… done. And a location? Well… here’s where it gets tricky!

Maybe the start-planning-your-dream-wedding-at-age-5 gals were right—because it would take a serious, long-term, high-yield investment account for us to afford our LA dream locations! Even the less-than-obvious, plain-dead-field with no electricity options… more on this below. (And man, do I love my hyphens!)

So, I turned to my trusty blogs and started seeing what was out there. And let me tell you—there’s A LOT* out there, and it’s NOT all super pretty, but it’s all pretty expensive!

The equation:

Awesome location + booze + amplified music = expensive.

I started scouring the typical wedding haunts, as well as lists of parks, gardens, and outdoor locations; awesome lofts and industrial spaces; little movie theaters. You name it, I emailed ‘em.

Here’s an extremely abbreviated list of places that we, ahem, thought we could afford:

Griffith Park- Wilson Harding “The Clubhouse”

Too expensive with bar/catering requirements. It is a cool building though… I love those wood trusses.

good bones, bad green tablecloths

pretty awesome counter action

outdoor area = good

source

Griffith Park - Visitor’s Center Auditorium

It looked pretty in the picture, but $1000+ is too expensive to get married in parking lot. Yup, that picturesque bit of grass is about 3/4 surrounded by parking.

Simple lawn = good. Car exhaust = bad. source

Franklin Canyon Park

We thought we had a winner—big open spaces, no amenities, we could have this baby for dirt cheap right? wrong! You get all this NOTHING for $4000!

Cute right?

Rustic right?

Cheap right? Um wrong.

source

Elysian Park - Grace E. Simon

$1600+ for a concrete picnic area and that unnaturally colored water. Please.

Simple. source

Like OMG! The water will match our teal bridesmaids’ dresses! source

Marvimon (Cue angel choir and bring me a hankie…)

Shhh… this is still my dream location folks. I love, love, love it. Sadly, you could put a down payment on a house in this LA market for the same price. The folks I contacted were super nice, but with a base fee of $6000 + a bunch of additional fees (for the location ALONE = no food/booze), this is punk rock style you PAY for. Damn sellouts.

le sigh. source

Downtown Independent

The site of our first date. It’s super cute and they were super NICE when they finally got back to me. We already had our heart set on OUR awesome location by then, but maybe we can have our after party here?

Loves me some downtown! source

So, which one did we pick? Check back and I’ll reveal our AWESOME location in all its glory!

Were you surprised by venue prices—even venues that offered no more than just an open space?