Wedding Location Update:

This post has been included in this weeks edition of The Totally Money Blog Carnival hosted by Retire by 40!  Go over and check out the great articles. As always, we are thrilled to be included!

If you haven't been following our journey, my fiance and I need to find a new wedding and reception site (See this post for why). Our main concern at this point is our budget since we originally planned on a park type wedding and reception.

So we drove down to Laguna Beach and met the wedding planner at the reception location she was talking about..Once we started talking numbers and comparing our old package to what we needed, we decided to make a huge decision...

If we got married in the park, we'd have to pay $250.00 for the 2 hour permit for just the ceremony... and then pay for the reception location as well. We asked about doing the reception in the park and paying for an additional permit, but we aren't allowed to--- ceremony only. Considering we only have our photographer for 2 hours, this would mean getting photos of just our wedding with no reception highlights.

So, instead of getting married at the park, we decided to have our ceremony on the front patio of the club house so we would only have one location fee. We still can get married outside (which was our priority) and the patio can hold all of our guests (70 people invited), seated as planned. Added bonus, no one's heels will sink in the grass. I can also get ready in the sitting room and remain hidden from my hubby to be's view until i walk down the isle. Since the ceremony was included in our original package, this won't cost us any more money since we'd need to book the facility for the reception anyway. Here's what our ceremony includes: Cost: $2,275.00

• Decorated Arch with silk and fresh flowers
• 70 white wood padded chairs, chair covers, and sashes
• Gerber daisy's tied to chairs near the isle
• Fresh rose petals to work as isle runner
• Sand Ceremony tables, and colored sands (we bring the personalized jar)
• Wedding coordination and reception
• Delivery, Set up, and Tear down.

Here's what our original package included for the reception: $3,200 includes:

• Our 3 tired cake decorated with Gerber daisies
• Photographer for 2 hours plus his res photos on CD: ($450.00)
• Plates for cake and 2 servers on site to help cut and serve cake, and pour drinks, refill containers, etc
• Apple Cider toast for all guests
• Ice tea & lemonade for beverages, including cups, ice, ext. 
• All the linens we need for all of our tables, INCLUDING additional tables not supplied at the location.
• Decorations and fresh flower arrangements for the reception (including Gerber daisy center pieces)
• Easel for photo signing (were having people sign a matted frame instead of a guestbook we will never look at)
• set up, tear down
• my bridal bouquet, 4 bridesmaid bouquets, 2 mom corsages, 1 corsage for my sister, & Father, Groom and 4 groomsmen's boutonnieres.
• Wedding reception outline/timeline
• taxes, delivery fees & gratuity

Our old package also included a decorated tent for the food and a decorated EZ up to cover and shade the "bride and groom table"... The wedding planner wasn't originally charging us for the tents in our first package, just the decorations since she owns the EZ ups and the Gazebo type tent. So, to make things more comparable she is going to upgrade our floral center pieces (they were originally very simple with just 3 Gerber daisy's in a glass vase) and add more floral decorations around the room and venue instead. We will be paying an additional $108.75 for centerpieces mirrors, candles, tea lites, cylinder glass vases, & bathroom toiletry's for the ladies room.

We will also need to cover the stage area with a little bit of draping so our photos won't be ugly (this will serve as the back drop for our couples table). We talked her into doing a smaller design that was simpler for $100 including the pipe draping.

Thankfully this venue also includes tables and chairs so we won't need to rent those (Phew!). The chairs aren't that pretty though... and since we have to pay for the chairs for the wedding ceremony, we are going to move them inside once the ceremony is over so we can use the pretty wood padded chairs with covers and sashes as the reception chairs (this will also free up the patio if people want to spend time outside). Win Win.  (There will also be staff from the wedding planners company to move them so guests won't be hauling their own chairs either.) The linens, centerpieces, and the rest of the decorations are included in our original package and can be modified to our new venue so we are good there...

We were able to discontinue the DJ we had originally booked at no fee to us. While we would like to have the DJ, the added location costs just aren't worth it, and the wedding planner voluntarily suggested we cut the DJ and go the Ipod route like we originally planned in the park before she got us a deal on the DJ. Now our music will cost us nothing, and saves us $200 that we already committed to spending.

Normally, the building requires a dance floor be rented, but the building owner told us that since we were using an ipod and having a DRY wedding (my family drinks too much and SCB's family doesn't drink at all), so the building owner was okay waving the required dance floor fee since we wouldn't be getting crazy with everything. $250.00 saved!

The location Fee is an additional  $1,100.00 and we'd have a cleaning fee of $150.00 and insurance comes to $120.00. The wedding planner's company is going to paying for the deposit on the building ($500)

So, our added package costs are: $1,578.75 (not considering the $200 we saved canceling the DJ). For needed a new location with less than 2 months till "I Do," I think we did an awesome job!

We are hiring a taco cart for $425 for our food (my sister had him at her engagement party and he's awesome) and having chips and salsa out too since our wedding starts at 1:30 and will be finished by 5:30 ish.