Part 3 of my Bridal Series is here!! I’m so excited to share with you all the process Dave and I went through to find our perfect venue! If you would like to get caught up on our story you can see How We Met and our Proposal Story.
So I just want to preface this post by saying that I am a San Diego girl through and through. I absolutely LOVE my city and I love even more that I get to explore so much of it by being a wedding photographer here! There are so many options for your wedding and they all can be completely different from one another. You have the beach with all it’s glory, you have the mountains of East County for a little bit of country, and you even have some beautiful wineries less than an hour north….I mean you really have pretty much everything at your disposal here as far as options for venues!
Since Dave and I are complete beach lovers some of my favorite venues near the water are:
The Darlington House – La Jolla
and there are even some…
Private Estates near the water!
Although I love me some San Diego surf and sun any day of the year, there were a few draw backs to having that for our wedding:
1. Dave and I have a lot of friends and acquaintances. We meet people constantly with our jobs and knowing us we would want to invite everyone and their mama to come celebrate with us. This posed a problem, not only for our pocketbooks, but also because we felt that we really wanted to spend time with our loved ones and not be overwhelmed by the amount of guests we had. So with this we decided early on that we wanted to have a more intimate guest count.
2. Being a wedding photographer, I felt that I really wanted to find somewhere that we could get married that I wouldn’t have a very likely chance of photographing another wedding at that same location. It’s kind of silly, but I wanted to imagine that we were the only ones that would ever get married at our venue and to see another couple saying their vows right where Dave and I had, would kind of take away the magic for me.
So once we had discussed these two things, we knew that we had to look outside of San Diego. I, just like many brides, couldn’t wait to start the planning process, and I think it was maybe about 4 days after our engagement I started diving into the interwebs looking from San Bernardino to Fiji and everywhere in between.
I looked on sites like:
I was searching like a mad woman and had found some promising contenders…..but everything else fell away when I stumbled upon this link:
LAS CALETAS – PUERTO VALLARTA
I think Dave thought something was wrong because when he looked over I had tears in my eyes…but it was only because it was absolutely perfect! I scooted over to him on the couch with my laptop and proceeded to show him all the images in the gallery. We were both mesmerized by how perfect this place was with the water and the jungle, the intimacy of the area, and all the beautiful candles everywhere for the reception….oh those candles!!
Once Dave was on board I searched for their website and emailed them right away about pricing. Marissa, from Vallarta Adventures emailed me the very next day with pricing info. I couldn’t contain my excitement when I called to tell my mom about this place. Dave and I made plans that week to have brunch with my parents to go over all the details.
We decided to go to The Glass Door on sunday morning. I brought my laptop with me and wanted so badly to open it up right away and show them. My parents couldn’t contain their excitement either. When I showed them everything they couldn’t stop smiling! They knew it was the perfect place for us to get married! We sent our deposit in that day and I couldn’t be happier with our choice!
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