An April Wedding

The wedding is almost here!!!

renalane — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:40:23 +0000

Well – we have about 9 more days until the wedding!!! Everything is coming together – some momments of stress here and there on my end, but Geoff has been helping a lot! At this point, I just need to finish up a few details, get the house ready for visitors, pack for the honeymoon and then start relaxing and celebrating!!! Phew – I guess there is a lot still to do!

I had my Bachelorette Party last weekend – it was a blast! Melissa threw a great party – we started off in our room at the Sheraton Universal and then headed to Saddle Ranch for dinner and some bull riding. Afterwards we walked down City Walk and went to Howl at the Moon – a dueling piano bar. It was so much fun – I woke up on Sunday and had lost my voice!! Good times were had by all!

I imagine this will be my last post until after the wedding. I haven’t even had time to blog in the last month or so. I am ready to start my life with Geoff and Juliana – I wish it was April 18th already!

- Rena

Invites are done!

renalane — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:29:51 +0000

I am excited…60 days left to the wedding and the invites are about to go in the mail tomorrow. Geoff’s Mom and Aunt Teenie offered to do the invites for us and I really want to thank them for all of their help – so Thank You! Geoff picked up the printed invites last week from his Aunt and over the weekend, my mom, Juliana, and I all worked on putting them together (note: it was also my mom’s birthday, so thank you for helping me on your birthday). Juliana was such a great helper – she really did a great job and helped with everything, from hole punching, tying bows, and putting on labels – I think she has a future in wedding planning!

Other news – we are about to put down a deposit with our caterer, so not a whole lot of planning left! Phew! The next big thing is finding a bakery and going cake tasting! YUM!

The Honeymoon is booked!

renalane — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:16:56 +0000

We booked the honeymoon today. We will be leaving bright and early Monday morning, April 20th from LAX and flying to Cancun. Since our flight departs at 8:15am, I imagine we will be staying the night in a hotel near the airport on Sunday night to get as much sleep as possible. Once we land in Cancun we will be traveling 42 miles south to the Riveria Maya region and staying at the Grand Riveria Princess in a Platinum Suite! Check out all that is included – http://www.lafinestratarzana.com/

Engagement Photo’s Posted!

geoff — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:11:03 +0000

Check out the link to the Engagement pics on the Photos page!

Things are coming together!

renalane — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:45:17 +0000

The wedding planning is in full swing and is going well.

This past week we locked in our Photographer – Araxi Photography. She was recommended to us by Chelsea and is great. We met up with her 2 weeks ago and instantly hit it off. I am so excited to have Araxi shoot our wedding! I love her style and know she will really capture our personalities. Check out her website and blog: http://araxiphotoblog.com/wordpress/

We also met with an old friend of mine from Baxter this week – Richard Decano, who is a DJ! We met him after lunch at the Stage Coach Inn on Wednesday and discussed the feel of our ceremony and reception. We should be nailing down the details of the contract soon!

Geoff and I had a wild and exciting Friday night this past weekend – we went and registered! Click on the Registry page for more information!

Yesterday we had a great engagement photo shoot with our friend Chelsea and photographer in downtown Ventura. Click on the Photo page for more info!

Today, Melissa and I went shopping for her dress. With some non-existent service at David’s Bridal, I took matters into my own hands and started digging through the racks to find any and all dresses in black! I think I made Melissa try on at least 15 dresses! But we found a great dress that won’t require too many alterations and looks absolutely fabulous on her! And…she can wear it again!

This week we are meeting with a possible officiant and possible caterer. I can’t wait to nail down the officiant, caterer and baker – cause then there won’t be too much else to worry about!

Thank you to all my friends and family who have offered their help to me/us with the planning process. I will be taking you all up on that help!!! I do have to say, I am pretty lucky – Geoff is very involved every step of the way…and as he said, “we are getting some great deals, this must be meant to be.” AWWWWW!!!!!

Rena

So it’s the Stagecoach!!!

geoff — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:00:20 +0000

We picked the Stagecoach Inn off Ventu in Thousand Oaks!!! Now we need to get the Caterer all set up…and get the Honeymoon stuff figured out…

One more possibility for Catering

geoff — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:13:40 +0000

So something cool happened last night. Rena, Juliana, and I went to Chili Peppers for dinner and I remembered that they offer catering also. Well, we spoke to the gal that works there that I’ve known for years and apparently they use one of the supply places we’ve looked at to get tables etc…

The cool part about it is that they can manage everything. So we’re going to chat with the guy on Friday about packages. We need to compare apples to apples so we’ll take one of the packages that we got from another caterer and do a comparison between them using the same options. So we’ll see…

Also, we’re tying to get the location settled up this week at the very latest… Stay tuned!

Rena got her dress!

renalane — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:06:20 +0000

Artist rendition of Rena in the dress...

On Saturday, Jan, 3d, my mom and my Maid of Honor Melissa headed down to Burbank for bridal dress shopping. We started off the day with lunch at BJ’s Brewery (one of my favorite places) and then headed over to Ikea for some window shopping (and of course some actual shopping). After that, it was time to head over to David’s Bridal in Burbank. Angie (Geoff’s sister) was planning on meeting us there but was running a little bit late, so I had to make sure to try on the “crappy” dresses first before she got there. The first dress I tried on, I loved (although I couldn’t breath). After that it was dress after dress after dress.

Most of them started to look the same and none of them seemed really special. Angie got there about half way through me trying on dresses. The first dress I came out with that she saw was your typical dream bridal gown (poofy, long train, gorgeous). We all loved it, but it was so heavy and hot, I didn’t think it would work for me. And then…I tried on “The Dress.” As soon as I walked out, my mom, Melissa, and Angie and the bridal consultant were speechless. I saw myself in the mirror and just knew. However, when the bridal consultant brought out a veil for me to try with the dress…if we weren’t sold before, we were sold now! I did go back to the very first dress I tried on that day (the one I couldn’t breath in), but it just wasn’t the same after ”The Dress.” It is amazing and I can’t wait for Geoff to see me walking down the aisle towards him in my beautiful dress and veil.

Location Sites narrowed down to two!

renalane — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:54:36 +0000

We have narrowed down the location for the ceremony/reception to two different sites and dates. We hope to have everything finalized by January 9th. The two sites are:

April 18th – The Stage Coach Inn: http://www.stagecoachmuseum.org/

The Stagecoach Inn

April 25th – The North Ranch Community Center: http://www.northranchcenter.com/

Places we’ve checked out so far

geoff — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Well, we’ve seen several places at this point so I’ll give some details on each place. Our budget is small ($5-8k) for about 60 people. It’s going to be a fairly small wedding so some family won’t be able to make it and some friends won’t be able to make it. This is going to be a point of contention…if it’s too much of a pain in the ass I’m grabbing her and running down to city hall…

These aren’t exactly in order of visit…

Sherwood Country Club
This is by far the nicest place that I’ve been to in quite a while. We had a 10am appointment with the catering director. The place has a dress code so we had to get gussied up to go check it out. So we get ready in the morning and headed on over to the Country club. We pull up to the front gate behind some italian supercar and in front of some german supercar. We’re in Rena’s 10 year old Jetta and she looks over to me and says…”Maybe we should have brought your car…”. Yeah probably…

So we pull up to the guard and I look up at the mirror and say…”I think I forgot to shave today…” Crap… So then I open the window and give the guard my name then rena says “Maybe we should lower the radio” I listen for a second and we are apparently blasting “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by the Beastie Boys. Very classy I might add…

So we drive up the private road up to the clubhouse. We park and make our way up to the clubhouse, passing some amazing grass and flowers and an amazing view. Go inside, give the front desk lady our name and wait. Rena whispers to me…”This is what it must be like to be rich” Holy moly…what an awesome place. We looked around and thought that it would be incredible to have our wedding there…

What a pretty place…so we checked out several of the rooms and they all look great. So at this point we are getting excited realizeing this could be awesome…then we look at the book for prices…ugh…So we thank the lady, chat about the pacakges…then leave realizing that we would be WAY over our heads with this…Oh well…

Scarlette Belle Paddleboat

This was pretty cool and included a lot…DJ, dance floor, cake…pretty much everything. It was offering a 4 hour trip around the harbor. We’re not sold on it, but we like it a lot.

Woodranch Country Club
Very nice…great reception room. The catering gal was super professional and VERY nice. This place is high on the list…

North Ranch Community Center
This was basically just the room. We bring in all of our own stuff…booze, linens, decorations, everything. It already had a dance floor. We wouldn’t need security or a licensed bartender. It would basically be a serve yourself dealie. So maybe a table with beer and some different liquors with maybe some tent cards on how to make whatever drink. We would also be able to get our own caterer so if we do a buffet it would make getting additional people there MUCH more easily. The price is right also.

I’ll let Rena describe the other places…