The Date! (And Venue!)

We have been looking forward to posting this one - we have officially booked our venue! We chose the Palm Event Center in Pleasanton, California. And of course, that means we picked a date! We will be getting married on July 9, 2011, or as I (Terry) like to put it, 7-9-11. Always the math nerd.

The (unofficial) decision came on December 23 (Happy Festivus!) when we visited another venue, Ruby Hill Golf Course. In the word of my future mother-in-law: "OMG, this place is gorgeous." And was it! The drive up alone is breathtaking as you wind your way up a little hill littered with mulit-million dollar homes that could easily be rented out for a wedding reception (the thought crossed my mind). Upon walking into the golf club, you find yourself in the area where the ceremony would take place. We would be married under a skylit dome before the banister of the grand staircase. At the base of the stairs is the reception hall which is lined with columns and windows providing a view to the luscious green course. Connected to the hall is a bar and lounge which evokes the feeling of a rustic log cabin. Right outside is the primary location for the ceremony. They really pushed this spot to us, but with a summer wedding, we just don't think that out in the heat is the best setting. All in all, the grounds and venue are beautiful, and the staircase is perfect for a "Cinderella Wedding."

But something just drew us back to the Palm. After our trip to Ruby Hill, we swung by the Event Center (literally a half mile away) to take a quick look inside, just for comparison. Jules and I made a brief survey around the place and silently smiled at each other. This place just clicked with us. We knew this is where we want to get married.

Ultimately, while we had lists of what we wanted in a venue, what made our decision was the overall ambiance of the Palm. We could envision our wedding here, not just another wedding at a cookie-cutter site. We love the barrels on all sides of the rooms, the idea of tea lights everywhere, the romance of getting married at a winery instead of a country club. We can envision a million awesome photo opportunities, and we think our guests will truly enjoy the entire experience. Plus (and this is a big one), we have heard nothing but wonderful reviews about the Palm, both from guests of past parties and from former brides. Those references tell us that we will have an unforgettable experience and a perfect wedding.

So after all the research, the visits, the meetings, the tours, on December 26th (Happy Kwankzaa!), Julie and I booked our wedding at the Palm Event Center for July 9, 2011. Julie's parents were with us through the entire process, from tours to that first down payment, so it was fitting that we all got to celebrate with a nice dinner that evening. We worked with Mackenzie, the most adorable wedding coordinator you can imagine (Julie's words), and we look forward to working with her throughout the next year and a half. The Palm offers a wedding coordinator service for rehearsal and day-of coordination for only $250, so we are gladly taking advantage of having someone available to put out any fires that (will inevitably) arise.

The Palm provides an incredible list of amenities for brides and grooms who book their special day there (do I sound like a wedding expert yet?), including:

Day of Event:

• Bridal Party and Vendor Access to Property 2 Hours Prior to Event for Photos and Set-Up
• 5 Hours of Event Time (i.e. guests on the property, which includes ceremony time)
• Access 2 Hours Prior to Event to Dressing Room with Floor Length Mirrors
• 1 Staff Member per 15-25 Guests (depending on style of service)
• 1 Bartender per 100 Adult Guests
• Team of Palm Management and Banquet Staff to Detail and Execute Event
• Set-Up and Break-Down of Included Equipment
• Choice of Ivory or White Floor-Length Linen
• Choice of Ivory or White Napkins with Standard Napkin Fold
• Glassware, Flatware, and China (excluding specialty items)
• Black Banquet Chairs
• Choice of Family Style, Buffet, or Sit-Down Food Service. All Service Styles Include House Appetizer Table, Choice of One Served Salad, Choice of Two Seasonal Entrees, Chef’s Choice of Two Starches and Seasonal Vegetables, and Palm Breads.
- Family Style and Buffet Include Both Seasonal Entrees for Each Guest
- Saturday Package Includes Choice of 3 Passed Appetizers from Seasonal Menu
• One Toast Pour of Sparkling Wine or Sparkling Cider Per Guest
• One Pour of Red or White Dinner Wine Per Guest
• 4 Consecutive Hours of Open Bar to Include Palm Signature Drink, Mitchell Katz Wine, Mitchell Katz Sparkling Wine, Non-Alcohol Beverages (sodas and juice), House Tap Beer, Standard Mixers, and Hard Liquor (no shots or doubles) From Your Selected Beverage Package. Bar Opens After Ceremony or Upon Guests Arrival for Offsite Ceremony Weddings.
• Cake Cutting Service
• Coffee and Hot Tea Buffet Served After Dinner Service

We feel that this package suits our needs exactly, especially the 4 hours of open bar, which we know both our brothers (and Matt Frankel) will appreciate. Since the venue is on a winery, we are of course limited to drinking only their wines, so we all ventured over for a tasting "just to make sure we like them..." And the wines were great! We're proud to have our guests enjoy Mitchell Katz wines; plus, as an added bonus, guests can go for their own tasting in the mini-wine region of Pleasanton during their weekend in the Bay Area, should they need some entertainment before or after the wedding.

If we had to name some problems with the venue, Julie and I would agree that the location, while gorgeous and perfect for a wedding, is far from any airports. With so many out of town guests, we realize that Pleasanton is less than ideal, even with three airport options (Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco) in the vicinity. Cab rides will be costly, but I'm hoping we can arrange some kind of shuttle system among the people we know in the area to avoid forcing our guests to incur extra fees on top of the hotel and the flights. Otherwise, this location is truly idyllic, and we can't wait to start planning the rest of the event!

Next post: Introducing our pastor and our first Christmas together

Winter Break Wedding Planning

Winter Break!!!

Right this very moment, Terry is on his way back from Buffalo, and this time he gets to stay home for good. He is going to take Monday through Wednesday off work - a well deserved break - which gives us 16 full days off together! I am so lucky that Terry's job allows him this long break, so we can enjoy each other's company, spend time with family, celebrate the holidays, and, of course, plan our wedding!

My wonderful parents have offered to visit two additional venues as a preview for us before we come up to the Bay Area. If these places are comparable to or better than Palm Event Center, we'll go back to check them out ourselves.

Bridges Golf Club

Bridges looks gorgeous but doesn't have an indoor ceremony space, which is a must-have for a July wedding in the Bay Area. If we end up loving the rest of the venue, we can look at other ceremony spaces.

Ruby Hill Golf Club

Ruby Hill is also beautiful, but the reception space looks a bit tight.

Hopefully my parents will be able to give us a better idea of whether these spaces might work for us. In an ideal world, we'll make our deposit on a venue before the new year! Once we make that first big decision, we'll be able to slowly start planning the rest!

Cash and Carry

If you haven't noticed by now, Terry and I are using a common motif throughout our blog. Well, we're going to try. One of our favorite songs is "Hard to Concentrate" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Each of our blog titles (so far) has a lyric from the song, which we hope to incorporate into the wedding.

I love Julie. (Terry wrote this when I walked away from the computer, and it seems wrong to delete something so sweet.)

Anyway, in keeping with our strange titles, this post focuses on budget. Terry and I are getting close to booking a venue, so we need to start thinking realistically about the type of wedding we can have, given our extensive guest list. We want a big, formal wedding, but we don't want our parents going into debt because of it. We're hoping to cut costs with a DIY wedding, but there are some areas we simply have to delegate. We're planning without a planner, so here are the areas we think we can tackle on our own:

DIY:

• Website
• Booking all vendors
• Invitations and save-the-dates (though we'll likely call in a friend for help on this one!)
  
• Centerpieces
• Favors
• Decorations at the ceremony and reception
• Hotel and transportation reservations for out of town guests
• Photo albums post-wedding
  
• Ceremony music
• Fashion (gown, bridesmaid dresses, tuxedos, etc.)
  

Call in for help:

• Photography
• Reception and cocktail hour music
• Cake
• Flowers
• Favors
  

I've been looking at various sites that offer budget worksheets to help us figure out what to expect. I will try to share some costs along the way, especially if we find some great deals!

Here are some wedding planning budget worksheets that have given me some perspective:

• About.com
• Wedding Wire (This one provides an Excel-oriented worksheet that can help you track your estimates, actual costs, expenditures, and payments. It also creates fun charts and bar graphs that I can only imagine being useful in case of making some sort of loan presentation...but they are fun and colorful nonetheless.)
• My Wedding Workbook

I've also checked out magazines and talked to friends about what to include in my budget estimates. The list is outrageous, but it's best to be prepared...

• Reception (50%) - site fee, food, beverages, cake, rentals, ceremony fee, and service charges
  
• Music (5-10%) - band for cocktail hour, DJ for reception
  
• Flowers/Decorations (5%) - bouquets, boutonnieres, floral decorations, corsages
  
• Photography (10%) - photographer, photo package, additional prints, digital prints
  
• Attire/Beauty (10%) - gown, alterations, veil, shoes, undergarments, hair, manicures, groom's tuxedo, shoes, and other accessories
  
• Other expenses (15%) - rehearsal dinner, post-wedding brunch, favors, transportation for bridal party, officiant's fee, marriage license, stationary (invitations, save the dates, thank you notes, etc.), and millions of gifts to thank all the people who make the wedding possible

Some other ways we are looking to cut down on costs:

• Hold the rehearsal dinner at my house in Fremont. Luckily, it's my dream location anyway, so this one works out all around.
  
• Don't overdo the flowers. We agree that we want to keep this area to a bare minimum. Our centerpieces will be non-floral, and we will focus on candles around the reception instead of flowers, so our flower expenses should only be corsages, boutonnieres, and bouquets.
• Research! In just the few months we have been engaged, I have found more cost-saving ideas than I could have imagined. The truth is, anyone can have a terrific wedding, whether you have a $10,000 budget or a $100,000 budget; you just have to be willing to put in the work. Thankfully, our year-and-a-half engagement allows us to find great deals!

Areas we are happy to pay for:

• Reception/ceremony venues, food, and service - we want our guests to have fun, and we want the day to run smoothly. We are willing to pay for professionalism and great service.
• Photography - after it's all over, we'll have these pictures up for the rest of our lives.
• Along those lines, the attire - let's face it, we all want to look our best on our wedding day!
• The date - yes, I know July is in the middle of peak wedding season. But it makes sense to get married during the summer, when I don't have to take time off of work or leave my students sans teacher. It also makes sense in the long run: our anniversary will always be during the summer, when we can more likely take vacations. Plus, we need it to be a Saturday so that our out-of-towners can make it up for the big day!
  

Who knew wedding planning would make me a financial planner?

Here We Go

Yesterday marked our first official stop on the wedding planning express. Was that too cheesy? How about, Yesterday marked the first steps in the beautiful journey to come. Okay, fine. Yesterday was our first wedding venue visit. So much for the beauty of language.

Since late August, I have been researching venues online, primarily through theknot.com, focusing on their "In Your Area" vendors search. The site allows you to edit your profile based on the season, location, color, size, and formality of your wedding, which makes hunting for venues ten times easier than using a simple web search. The Knot provides, for each venue, pictures, price ranges, capacity information, and amenities that the venue offers, such as valet parking and whether or not a ceremony site is available.

Another great site is Here Comes the Guide, similar to The Knot. This site breaks down locations by more specific regions ("East Bay" rather than "Northern California"). Actually, this service was somewhat of a disadvantage to us in that we were not sure exactly where in the Bay Area we wanted to get married, but I can see it being helpful to most couples.

In conducting my not-so-scientific research, I realized I needed two vital pieces of information before we could even get close to booking a place: 1) the guest count (approximate), and 2) the budget. There would be no sense in falling in love with a place if it could only accommodate 75 people and was way over our budget. So we called in the families for help. Parents were "assigned" the task of creating a tentative guest list by November 7, which was also the date the families would all get together for the second time since the engagement. After that, Terry and I typed up the lists and estimated a grand total of 258+. Not everyone will attend (it is, after all, somewhat of a destination wedding), and not everyone will bring a date, so our magic number lands at approximately 200.

After conducting months of research and creating an (as-yet-unfinished) enormous Excel spreadsheet of possible venues, I sent out feelers to a few places. Here were our major requirements:

• Keep it close to home. As much as I have always wanted to get married in San Francisco, logic tells me the day (and year and a half of planning) will be ten times less stressful if the location is close to Fremont, where my family's house is. I have also always wanted to have the rehearsal dinner at my parents' house, so it makes sense to keep the following day nearby (within 30 minutes of Fremont).
  
• Can everyone fit? We now have a guest list of about 200, and Terry and I are adamant about making sure that everyone has plenty of room to eat, dance, and be merry. We have been looking at venues that allow for 250 or more in order to ensure that 200 is a perfect fit (not a squeeze).
  
• It must be indoors. As gorgeous as outdoor weddings can be, we know we want our wedding in July. In California. In the afternoon. It's going to be HOT. We don't want our guests to suffer in the heat, and we don't want anyone passing out from dehydration. Additionally, the Great Outdoors offer too many potential unknowns, and we don't want to mess with Mother Nature (moreover, we don't want Mother Nature messing with us) on our wedding day.

Our first visit was to the Palm Event Center in Pleasanton, California. We entered the gorgeous vineyard event room to find a king's table set up with photo albums from previous weddings. Stephanie, a fantastic tour guide, greeted us immediately, and we had her full attention for the next hour. Stephanie answered every question we had before we knew we had it, and she didn't oversell any aspect of the venue. She showed us each space and offered ideas for different options, and her demeanor maintained a professional and friendly tone. I could not have felt more impressed, and Terry and my parents felt the same way.

The space at the Palm, as you can see in the pictures, focuses on wine - perfect! Terry and I (and our parents) love wine, the wine country, wine tasting, you name it. The vineyard would make an ideal backdrop for pictures, and the Estate Room would make a gorgeous ceremony setting.

While we still need to see a few other venues for comparison's sake, we liked a lot of what the Palm has to offer. I hope to book within the next month or so. If this first stop on our wedding planning journey is any indication, the next year and a half should be a fun ride!

Finally You Have Found Something Perfect

The proposal goes back to the weekend before the 4th of July, 2009. I definitely wanted to go the traditional route in asking Julie's parents for permission (in person) before planning anything. The only difficult part was that with Julie's parents in NorCal, I couldn't just stop by to ask on my way home from work. Thankfully, Julie's parents own a place up at the Delta near Stockton, where I was able to set everything in motion.

Obviously, the whole situation was a little nerve-wracking. First, I had to find the opportunity to talk to her parents without Jules catching on to what I was doing. Second, I had to hope that no one would spill the beans there on the spot. Luckily, I managed to corner her dad while she was out by the water. Stammering through most of it, I asked for Julie's hand and received a teary (and happy) nod. But I also had to talk to her mom. Dave called her into the room, and I formally asked for permission to ask Julie to marry me. Now, I'm not intimidated by Julie's parents (not anymore, at least), but during that whole scene I was rooted to the spot a good 10 feet away from her father and didn't move until I had gotten a "yes" from both of them.

Later that evening, I told her brother that I was planning to propose to his sister. His response? "That's awesome!" And even though they were sworn to secrecy, Julie's parents were so excited that they had to tell family friends, the Johnson's, everything as soon as we had left.

The ring was next. Luckily, Julie's aunt Dawn Lynn was willing to give me a diamond that once belonged to Julie's great-grandmother. Julie had shown me a few ideas of what she wanted, and the heirloom center stone allowed me to design Julie's dream ring. With a little help from Jan's jeweler, I had myself a ring... in San Jose. In early August, I flew to San Jose, picked up the ring, had lunch with Dave, and flew back to LA. Excited and anxious, I called our friends to inform them of the upcoming event. That evening, Julie assumed I had been at work all day and didn't suspect a thing.

On Friday, August 21st, 2009, I was ready to go. I wanted to take Jules on a walk around our neighborhood, as it was going to be one of the last ones in the area (we were getting ready to move). There's a quiet little corner that doesn't get much traffic that I knew would be perfect. Of course, Julie had other ideas for the day; she wanted to go to the beach. I did have to be a little stubborn about it, but I was able to convince Jules that we should really walk around the block. She agreed and off we went, me keeping a surprisingly cool head about me. We talked about restaurants we hadn't been to that we still wanted to try, Julie's new job (which she got the call for while we were on the walk - two awesome events in one day!), and the things we'd miss about our first place together.

When we got to the corner of Westgate and Currituck, Julie mentioned that she felt me starting to slow my pace, but didn't think much of it. As we neared the corner, I told her how much I loved her, and that even though this would be our last walk in the neighborhood, I was looking forward to many more walks in our lives. I got down on one knee, pulled out the ring, and asked Jules to marry me.

She said yes.

The Olive Theory

The Olive Theory. When Terry and I first heard them, these three words changed our lives. Well, as much as any three words from a CBS sitcom can change someone's life.

The words come from the pilot of the popular series "How I Met Your Mother". In the episode, we learn that two of the main characters, Marshall and Lily, are so perfect for each other because Marshall hates olives, Lily loves them. "In a weird way," says Ted, Marshall's best friend, "that's what makes them such a great couple. Perfect balance." Similarly, Terry loves olives, I hate them.

The Olive Theory ties into our nuptials in more than one way. As I said, after all, the concept changed our lives. First, after that pilot episode, we are now die hard "How I Met Your Mother" fans. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Oh, I love that show!" That's cool and all, but Terry and I are die hard fans. We don't just know the characters, we know what the characters would do in everyday situations. We don't just watch the show every Monday night, we own all of the DVDs - and watch them regularly. We don't just discuss our favorite episodes, we quote our favorite episodes. People think we're weird. We think they're right.

So, okay, we love the show. Maybe more than we should. But that's who we are. We love television. In the same way, we are die hard fans of "Seinfeld", "The Office", and "Friends". We're working on "Arrested Development", "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", and "30 Rock". We quote these shows on a daily - okay, hourly - basis and find ways to reference them in most situations. I'm not going so far as to say our entire relationship is founded on a silly television show, but we may not be where we are today if it weren't for Ted, Lily, Marshall, Robin, and Barney. Oh, Barney...

If you are just getting to know Terry and me, I hope this blog will provide some insight. Here are some basics:

We met at UCLA. We currently live in Los Angeles. Terry works as an electrical engineer and is pursuing his Master's in the same field; I am a high school English teacher and cheerleading coach. We celebrated our three-year anniversary in July 2009, and Terry proposed on August 21, 2009. We are getting married in July 2011 in the Bay Area, where I grew up. Our favorite way to spend a weekend (if we aren't traveling) is hiking, finding something new to do in LA, cooking together, and going to the movies.

I hope you enjoy our wedding blog! Thank you for reading.