the dream venue. the reality venue. the awesome venue.
So we’re engaged. What to do next?
Not being a girl with a wedding addiction since age 5- no wedding binder, no pre-engagement wedding blog addiction (i’m making up for it now) no ring, dress, or invitation suite ALREADY picked out. Seriously ladies?
oh hell no.
So it took just a minute for me to be up to speed and start figuring things out. Being obsessed with all things design/crafty I immediately thought of Save-the-Dates and Invites, and then realized we’d have to have some information to put on those bad boys.
Like a date. Simple enough. And a city. LA done. And a location? Well… here’s where it gets tricky! Maybe the start-planning-your-dream-wedding-at-age-5 gals were right- b/c it would take a serious, long-term, high-yield investment account, for me to afford my LA dream locations! Even the less-than-obvious, plain-dead-field w/no electricity options. more on this below. (and man do i love my hyphens!)
So I turned to my trusty blogs and started seeing what was out there. And let me tell you- there’s A LOT* out there, and it’s NOT all super pretty, but it’s all pretty expensive!
The equation:
awesome location + booze + amplified music = expensive.
I started scouring the typical wedding haunts, as well as lists of parks, gardens, and outdoor locations; awesome lofts and industrial spaces; little movie theaters. You name it- I emailed ‘em.
Here’s an extremely abbreviated list of places that we, ahem, thought we could afford:
Griffith Park- Wilson Harding “The Clubhouse”
too expensive with bar/catering requirements. cool building though- love those wood trusses.
good bones, bad green table cloths
pretty awesome counter action
outdoor area = good
Griffith Park- Visitor’s Center Auditorium. Looked pretty in the picture, but $1000+ is too expensive to get married in a parking lot. Yup- that picturesque bit of grass is about 3/4 surrounded by parking.
simple lawn = good. car exhaust = bad.
Franklin Canyon Park- we thought we had a winner- big open spaces, no amenities, we could have this baby for dirt cheap right? wrong! You get all this NOTHING for $4000!
cute right?
rustic right?
cheap right? um wrong.
Elysian Park- Grace E. Simon- $1600+ for a concrete picnic area and that unnaturally colored water. please.
simple.
like omg! the water will match our teal bridesmaid dresses!
Marvimon. (cue angel choir and bring me a hankie) Shhh…this is still my dream location folks. I love, love, love it. Sadly you could put a down payment on a house in this LA market for the same price. folks i contacted were super nice, but with a base fee of $6000 + a bunch of additional fees, (For the location ALONE = no food/booze) this is punk rock style you PAY for. damn sellouts.
*Sorry Mrs. Sprinkle- you know I’m just kidding! Kinda. Your wedding was gorgeous and we really should get on that whole running business someday soon…
le sigh.
Downtown Independant- The site of our first date. It’s super cute and they were super NICE when they finally got back to me. We already had our heart set on OUR awesome location by then, but maybe we can have our after party here?
loves me some downtown!
So which one did we pick? Check back in a later and I’ll reveal our AWESOME location in all its glory!
