Hunting for Real Estate

Wedding planners are a lot like Real Estate Agents. They drive around in unknown areas with perfect strangers in hopes that their clients will have this "Heavenly Awakening" where the looming clouds of wedding planning will open and the trumpets will sound as they walk the "blissful couple" (and by blissful I mean dark circle eyed and exhausted) through the doors (or in some cases drive them around on electric golf carts that catapult you out of your seat upon ignition) of some vast undecorated space. Ideally in this moment, as they look at this blank canvas, their imaginations will spring to life from their sleep deprived, coffee and Red Bull dependent brains and all of their visions of wedding wonder will come flooding in like the waters of the Red Sea after partition. We have traveled to the ends of the earth, and by that I mean from Santa Barbara to San Diego, unless you count our internet research then we have escapaded through the lush rainforests of the Caribbean and the blue waters of the Mexican Pacific, in search of our own trumpeted serenade. Countless weekends (ok maybe 4 weekends) at negative 5 miles per hour have been spent on the 6 lane neverending parking lots otherwise known as the 5, 405 and 101 freeways. Ryan and I have made enumerous friends (or at least summonded some crazy looks) with our parking lot neighbors as we essentially drive at a backwards pace. In those moments of silent lull when frustrations of non-forward moving progress begin to embed at the depths of your gut and you begin to secretly (or in my case outwardly) wish you owned a monster truck and an automatic weapon, I (Sarah) break out my camera and do this...

Because there is nothing like someone snapping multiple pictures of you amidst times of turmoil and angst (and YES TRAFFIC DOES CAUSE THESE!!!) to calm the nerves and promote tranquil serenity (just think of all the good I could do if I had my Cannon 50D digitial SLR and multiple lenses). Onward with the JOURNEY...

Now keep in mind when I (Sarah) look at a venue I try to look at it as if I were looking through a camera lens because ultimately your photo's are what you are going to have to remember your wedding by. I want our photo's to have the photojournalistic, candid shot appeal to them and since I have already booked THE BEST photographer on the face of the planet I tend to try and take into consideration what she could "do with the place".

Weekend 1...Santa Barbara:

Our original thought was to rent a big estate somewhere with "sprawling grounds" (you think I am wordy, you should see some these property descriptions, it's like the writers carry around a "Thesaurus O' Exaggerated BS") where our families could come from far and wide and have a place to stay, hang out and end the week with a giant party. Now mind you most of the members of our two families have never met each other and if it's ANYTHING like the Christmas Ryan's parents came to my parents house and met for the first time, Ryan and I knew we were in for some great future "leverage/blackmail" opportunites. Think the Griswold Family movies times a Gagoolian (yes that's a word where do you think Google came from). So being it was the holiday's and Ryan's parents were in town we thought we would all check out this beautiful estate:At first we were STOKED!! The price seemed right, it was in a BEAUTIFUL neighborhood, near the beach on some bluffs. Then all of a sudden they tacked on this bogus fee that didn't include ANYTHING!!! So... NOPE!!! (besides who really finds their venue on the first try and if they exist, where are they so I can take my monster truck, run them over and then shoot them!)

Weekend Two(one month later)...Simi Valley:

Despite blustery arrid winds and the smell of the "East Valley" we braved the Simi Valley natives (think Sparks with money, you Nevadan's know what I am talking about) and made it to our first REAL venue stop:

This place was very SPACIOUS, had a lot of eclectic rustic appeal and we loved the rowboat on the lake. However, it somewhat reminded me (Sarah) of Stephen King's book and movie "The Shining"..."All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy"...where Jack Nicholson plays and ax toting, eyebrow lifting pyschopath set on chopping up his family to bits...yeah that movie. We thought perhaps that probably wasn't the best reference to have when picking a place to begin our lives together. So after much deliberation and careful thought, almost getting launched out of a golf cart on multiple occasions, consideration of HADES like heat in August and the final straw (which was the real deal breaker)...told that the bathrooms would cost extra (yes you read that right), our collective agreement was a resounding NOPE!!! Since this was our first venue search attempt and it had pretty much sucked the life out of us we decided we needed some booze and some time to regroup and come up with a different tactical approach. It's like strategic war, I am not kidding!

Weekend 3...Camarillo & Westlake Village:

After a week of more caffine induced recovery, we decided to hit the ground running and by that I mean we went to TWO places, to our credit one was in Camarillo and the other in Westlake Village (please refer to aforemention time regressing avenues of required travel).

First stop...CamarilloThis place was so charming, set on a vineyard with a REAL LIFE TROLLEY that would take guests back and forth from the parking lot to the venue...This could have been a very bad thing because I may have just spent the whole time on the trolley hoping for a chance to drive it...I could just see the headlines now, "Man get's stood up at his own wedding for a Trolley." Ryan was pretty stoked they had a wood fire pizza oven and we could just imagine how pretty it would be at night all lit up. The downside, in the brochure it showed that the bathrooms (they were included in the price IMAGINE THAT!) were painted with these FABULOUS BRIGHT RED DOORS (remember I am in picture mode) but when we saw the place they had painted them maroon, talk about a let down!!! (yes it's the little things that excite me). The deal breaker, however, was that the venue required lights out at 10 PM and while we know that most places make you shut off the music at 10, they at the very least let you mull around and soak in the events of the evening before you get the ol' "GET OUT" boot crammed into your backside. This OBVIOUSLY wouldn't work for our group because as anyone can tell you with our friends and family if someone doesn't get arrested then it just isn't a party...Just kidding mom! Another downfall, while Camarillo is beautiful it is a "Suburban sporting, curfew having, soccor mom" heaven (I think even the 7-11's in that area close at night) so referring back to my previous comment, our guests would have nowhere to go give themselves the opportunity to get arrested after they left the reception...Just kidding again mom. So yep, you guessed it...NOPE!

Stop 2...Westlake Village:

We are not even going to dignify this place with a paragraph. The coordinator was about as personable as a cactus plant and the place smelled like a musty old retirement home....NOPE!!!

Weekend 4...Back to Santa Barbara

Unfortunately we don't have any photo's of our little weekend outing because of the nature of our visit. My mom (Sarah) was put in contact with the most delightful of people that graciously offered their beautiful estate to us to hold our wedding. While we don't feel it is right to post photo's of the place they live in, we felt it necessary to tell you how touched we both were that this couple was willing to open up their home and their lives for two people, their families and their friends whom they don't even know. Not only that, but they were willing to rearrange furniture, bring in their housekeeper to maintain proper care of the common areas, wanted to HELP during the event, and even (and I think this touches me the most) offered the use of their BEAUTIFUL grand piano in case we wanted to wind things down with a bit of classical music after the reception. I must say it isn't very often that we come across people that we know in our own lives that are willing to open what is most precious to them and share it with people they know, let alone perfect strangers...So to them, we say thank you from the very bottom of our hearts!

In any event, it turns out that the weekend we are planning to have the wedding is the big "FIESTA" in Santa Barbara. We are not sure what this all entails, but at the wisdom of our gracious new friends we heeded their advice that the possibility of hotel rooms in the area for out of towners is NIL and anyone thinking about traveling from anywhere north of Ventura can count on a 3 to 6 hour drive, which means they would be driving negative 10 miles on said freeways (unless of course they monster trucks and automatic weapons).

So, we will end our journey here for now...More wild and wacky adventures, Redbull, booze and coffee and we will even have a new addition to our venue hunting expedition...Stay tuned for part 2 of Hunting for Real Estate...