We liked the simplicity of somewhere else and I (Sarah) felt less and less like a drooling choochoo train at the thought of having someone else do everything and I could just show up (and let me just say there must be diabolically opposing forces working at the inner depths of my core for this "Type A/OCD" soul to give up such control). Given the IMPLOSION in our economy we wanted to be as sensitive as possible to the intracacies of having a wedding in unfamiliar and potentially pricey territory. Despite the intimacy of a destination wedding we both still very much wanted the party so it was still important for us to make it possible for friends and family to be there. The owner's of the resort gave us a fantastic deal for the entire resort that could potentially house 60 people and a 10% discount on any flight reservations made in relation to our wedding....Could it be that this was IT, THE PLACE, DESTINY?!?!?!?! Alas...NOPE but this time with the most amazingly flattering reason ever! I must say we both have THE MOST incredible friends and family EVER. We had over 70 "YES" preliminary rsvp's. We can't begin to describe how blessed we feel to have so many people that love us so much (and due for a MUCH needed vacation) say that they, "wouldn't have missed the big day for anything." Seeing as how we wouldn't be able to house everyone at the resort and not being familiar with the area we didn't want to risk everyone not being in the same location...so here we go again...What round of searching is this now??? Elventy?
Some of our other destination searches:
St. Lucia
Bermuda
Turks & Caicos
Turks & Caicos
Then this thought blind sided us with a meteroligical 2x4...August + Caribbean = HURRICANE... NOPE!!!
Next stop: Manhattan Beach..."All Aboard." CHOOCHOO!!
All throughout this process we keep getting asked the same question, which leads me to believe it must be important. Well it's certainly a good thing we know how to answer it then, or perhaps it's that WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION!!! This question was developed in the bowels of Hades and takes the form of, "What do you envision?". Sarah's short answer, "I envision that I get a phone call telling me its all ready and I just need to show up, oh and that it's free...does that help?" Ryan's response is not as much verbal as is it is a slow terrified look in my direction hoping to find that his future wife's head hasn't exploded at hearing the firey mouth of the "Dark One" yet again opening it's "trap-0-auditory poison" to spew verbal fire one more time. So imagine my delight when my night in "wedding planning" armor calls me and says, "I talked the Event Director of a place in Manhattan Beach and she gave me a price list that it looks to be within our budget. She will be there til 7 tonight. Can you get off a little early so we can check it out?" I think Ryan wears the armor to protect himself from shrapnel wounds of inevitable spontanious "pre-wife" combustion. We have walked by this hotel many times before seeing as how we LOVE Manhattan beach and hope to one day live there, however we had never been inside until this night. At first glance it seemed perfect, it had the modern, clean-lined South Beach chic appeal that we tended to gravitate towards (mind you we still can't answer the "question that shall not be named"). The rooms are AWESOME, the food and drink is phenominal, it was centrally located to major areas of entertainment, accomodations and transporation, plus the venue only performed one wedding a day and seemed to have all the amenities and privacy we needed to ensure everyone had a great time.
Sounds great right?!?!?!?! Oh...wait...here it comes...
"THE CATCH"
Even though this beautiful hotel is basically across the street from the beach and the pier, they don't perform ceremonies on either one. What they do is have the ceremony in their enclosed courtyard and when the ceremony is over they herd everyone into the bar area for cocktail hour so they can turn everything over to create the reception area where the ceremony was held. This doesn't bode well for "mixing things up" more importantly we would have to skyrocket to the outer perimeters of our budget in order for us to either make the place look and feel varied and less monochromatic or go through all the "rigamorrow" of renting chairs and getting permits to hold it at the beach. So here I shall say it yet one more time... NOPE (but with this caveat: We would highly recommend this place, great Mojito's, sliders and all around feel)
CHOOCHOOO...and onwards to "Hunting for Real Estate Part 3" ...CHOOCHOO, let the drooling and head voices begin...CHOOCHOO, is that steam coming out of Sarah's ears?!?!...CHOOCHOO, is that Ryan putting on his armor again?....
.jpg)
This little nugget of fantasticness is guaranteed ensure rapid advancements in world peace...or quite possibly a sense of shear terror in my photographer that I will stalk her even more than I already do now (sorry Natalie, I will try my hardest to avoid having you file a restraining order against me :)!). Not to mention generate complete and total annoyance to Ryan as I take pictures of his every basic movement, which he HAS to be ok with because it's part of that whole "will you marry me" deal he signed! If anyone would like a visual as to my excitement upon opening this golden piece of extacy, Ryan harkens it to something like this (next to Kandee's video's, hands down THE BEST video on youtube):
