July 2008 Archives

When we were first planning our event we quickly narrowed the location to two very different locations. The first was a State Park & Beach (Asilomar), the other was a private farm inland from the shore where we'd have the entire venue to ourselves for the whole weekend (Holly Farm).

In order to have our event at Asilomar, we would have to fill out an extensive application and wait for approval. They do not take applications more than 1 year in advance.

One year out, it's likely that Holly Farm would already be booked. We went back and forth on this decision a whole lot, and eventually decided to splurge for Holly Farm, with the understanding that the block of rooms for our guests would be at Asilomar, and we'd have a bonfire there Friday night.

There were many reasons why we felt Asilomar suited our event so well:

1. It's a State Beach
2. The architecture (designed by California's first licensed female architect) is listed as a National Landmark.
3. The arrangement of rooms is such that there are common gathering spaces for sets of rooms. People could meet, visit, mingle and generally socalize in these spaces.
4. The grounds are spectacular, and very different from the East Coast beaches with which most of the atendees would be familiar.
5. There are no televisions in the rooms, making it more likely for people to congregate in the public spaces.[*]
6. Breakfast would be provided to the guests
7. Being a State Park, the rooms are quite reasonable.
8. Etc, etc, etc.

Chiara called Friday to start the process of reserving a block of rooms, and learned that they have booked an event for the entire grounds on our planned weekend. We won't be able to house our guests there[**], we won't be able to have our Friday night bonfire on the beach.

I was very nearly devastated by this news. I was tickled at the prospect at having our (wedding) cake and eat it too. It was the best of both worlds. Really, a setback like this was bound to happen. An affair of this magnitude can't be planned without a few hitches. This may be a rather big one, but in the end it is hardly insurmountable.

I have faith that we can work around it. We will find some way to make it work, and in the end everything will be fine. I'm still reeling, but we will persevere.

[*] The only way this could be more perfect is if we could schedule the event to coincide with some major sporting event.

[**] As it turned out, we would only have been able to reserve a block of rooms if we had our event there, so this was not a possibility in any case.

About “...the best choice” from my previous post. It’s a thorny issue. One of the things we did early on (probably on Ariel’s advice) was look at the various line-items of your typical wedding budget and put priorites to them. It should surprise no-one that we put photography pretty close to the top of the list.

This week we talked about our various options. All of them are capable. It’s clear that we’d be satisfied with any of them. But each of them is very different. Of the original three there were two front-runners, and one probable winner. The rub, of course, is that said winner is more than our original budget for photography. Probably (once you add up every little itemized thing) quite a bit more.

That’s ok, we’ve prioritized. Photography was pretty close to the top, so we just need to rebalance everything, right? But wait, do we really? Is the photography the number one priority? And then I had an epiphany. To be honest, the number one priority is not having the stress-filled, abbreviated, cookie-cutter event in a country-club reception hall.

The number one priority was having a whole-weekend event, surrounded by our circle, our tribe, in a laid-back atmosphere at the locations we’ve chosen. This is obvious, given that we’ve allocated over half our budget to said locations (and already committed a sizable chunk of change to reserving them, so it’s a bit late to reprioritize too much), but it still feels better to frame it that way.

I think that part of the allure of Jerry Yoon, apart from all the things I’ve already mentioned, is that he also gets us (me) out of a jam: that prospect completely side-steps the danger of feeling like we’re “settling” for our second choice.

Our wedding planning is starting to ramp up. Most recently, we’ve been interviewing photographers. We investigated quite a number of possibilities on the web, and chose 3 that we knew we wanted to interview (including one who we watched work (or tried to) at the wedding of two friends).

Our last interview was Tuesday evening. While the next task of comparing apples to oranges, to a Farbergé egg is still before us, I felt good about getting the interview process behind us.

On the way home on Tuesday, Chiara mentioned that a friend (and coworker) had mentioned a friend of hers who “takes beautiful pictures, and might be more economical, since they’ve only been doing it for 4 or 5 years.” My thought on that was, “Well, yes, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at their webs—wow!”

Go ahead, look for yourself. Spend some time exploring it a bit. I’ll be here when you get back.

There are a few facets of these photos that grab me. They are heavily weighted toward candids, and the energy in them is wonderful. Even the posed portraits are interesting, and don’t feel forced or contrived. They also have a modern style without that “hipster-(too-)cool, full-of-yourself” (sneering) veneer that we both find so off-putting. We’d been looking at more traditional photographers specifically because we didn’t want anything to do with that. They also have elements that were common to everyone with whom we spoke.

In spite of what Alexa said, they’re not all that inexpensive. (Though their packages tend to include more, so they may end up being economical.) But they do get major kudos for being up-front enough to put package pricing on the web. (Though -20pts for the “page” that’s just one big image, and -10 extra for the horizontal scrolling (which would probably be 10 or 20 more if I didn’t have two-finger scrolling on my MBP). It just occurred to me that the “one big image” page could be a way to make sure it doesn’t get indexed. Still, points off.)

So, we’re setting up another interview. If you told me that on Tuesday, I would have accepted it with a weary acquiescence. But I devoured that site, I loved the feel of it. Without realizing it, I looked up and realized I was 17 pages in. I’m actually excited to talk to them, and see if they’re the best choice.