Weddingbee Blog

When the mister and I first began searching for a venue, we both were 100% certain that we wanted to focus our search in downtown Los Angeles and surrounding areas. Unfortunately for us, the first batch of potential venues turned out to be either way out of our price range or unwilling to work with a guest count as small as ours. It was a complete bummer, which left us discouraged and a little gun shy to continue searching.

After our first attempt left us doubting our choice to have our wedding in Los Angeles, the mister and I regrouped and decided to come up with a more creative hunting strategy. We reasoned that with the overly inflated cost that typically accompanies anything even remotely related to weddings, we would avoid any and all wedding-related websites and magazines and instead choose to focus our search on city websites, Craigslist, and good old fashioned driving around.

After a couple of weeks of searching the web and making note of any spaces for rent during our time in the city, we had compiled a pretty hefty list of available locations that we whittled down to two top contenders.

The first one was the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Located at the top of Baldwin Hills in Culver City, the Overlook is an amazing location with beautiful views of the city, while still having a natural setting to plan your wedding around.

Source

My main concern regarding the Overlook was that at $2,400 for four hours, the Overlook was at the tippy top of our venue budget. The venue also had an extremely limited list of preferred vendors, which had the potential to wreak havoc on our limited budget further down the road.

The second venue on our list actually lead us to our fabulous photographer, who I will discuss in a later post! The Rec Center Echo Park had everything we were looking for in an event space. Because the space is typically used as a photography studio, the owners allow for complete customization of the space, including painting of walls and rearranging of any existing furniture.

Source for above images

Our main concern was the location of the space—Echo Park is one of the areas in L.A. that, although up and coming, can be a little off-putting to some of our guests who may not be accustomed to spending time in Los Angeles like we are. Also, the Rec Center offered no parking to our guests, which meant that they would have to find parking in one of the metered lots located in the area.

After visiting the Rec Center the mister and I decided that, although they were great spaces, neither location offered us what we were looking for at a price that would make our wallets happy. At around the same time S, my wonderful bridesmaid and uber-talented florist, asked if we would ever consider having our wedding in Riverside, where my family resides and where we grew up. She mentioned that she had assisted her mother in setting up several weddings at the Riverside Art Museum and that she was very impressed with the space.

Not one to pass up a possible venue lead, I quickly emailed the museum coordinator and scheduled a site tour for the next week. Hive, I have no words for the feeling I got when we viewed the location; it was simply perfect—beautifully modern, yet with a beauty that only older buildings have. Once we sat down with the museum coordinator to discuss pricing, I almost died with joy.

To rent the whole first floor of the museum for 10 hours, we would end up 200 bucks below our venue budget! I am beyond relieved to have found our perfect venue and cannot wait to party it up with our closest peeps in our little gem of a space. Without further ado, I present to you our venue: the Riverside Art Museum, or RAM for short!

Personal Photos

Sorry for the sucky pics, but we were so happy to find our venue that I think we forgot how to work our camera!

Crappy pics aside, adore or no?