Orange

Zac had bought me a bouquet of flowers a while back.. and they were these flowers with great deep orange colors.. and I thought it would be a great color to use for the color scheme for our wedding.  Oranges, greens - great outdoorsy autumn type colors.

Today I was looking at florists, and came across these pictures. I think they are awesome. What do you think?

The original inspiration:

Venue: Holland Ranch

We really, really like this place. Holland Ranch is in San Luis Obispo.

 "A bit more casual and kitschy, which seems more Kate Smith to me! I love the barn!" - my good friend, Karen


Check out the pictures! As always, click on them to enlarge.

Some great links to beautiful weddings at Holland Ranch:

Link 1 - Cameron Ingalls - The Wedding Standard

Link 2 - Jen Rodriguez [Jen Slot]

Link 3 - Jen Rodriguez 2 [Jen Slot]

Link 4 - David Pascolla

Link 5 - David Pascolla 2 

Link 6 - Cameron Ingalls

Zac would never go for a jeans/cowboy boots sort of wedding [only in my dreams!!]. But, isn't this just fabulous??

Venue: Eagle Castle Winery

On Friday afternoon, I was attempting to finalize which venues we wanted to see that weekend. Zac kept reminding me that he wanted to at least relax a little on our weekend visit to SLO.. and to take into consideration the USC football on Saturday [of course].

I had emailed back and forth a couple times with Roxan, the event/wedding coordinator at Eagle Castle Winery in Paso Robles. On Friday afternoon I gave her a call to talk about us coming by for a visit. I realized it may be a bit difficult as it was Harvest Festival in Paso, but I thought we could fit something in. She suggested we stop by that evening on our drive down to Los Osos.. and I said it sounded like a great idea, but we'd have Parker (our dog) with us... turns out, they are dog friendly! She said, bring him! So we did.

Eagle Castle was magnificent. Zac absolutely loved the place. It was medieval, and fun. The pictures on the website do not do the place justice. They need to be bigger! [Maybe it is a problem with my browser, I don't know.] Anyways.

Roxan showed us around the castle, and we new instantly it was a top contender. It's not exactly what I had pictured for our wedding (rustic, kitschy, DIRT...), but it was DEFINITELY a place worth considering. We tasted all of their wines, had a great time chatting with Roxan and her boyfriend [soon-to-be assistant winemaker at the castle]... and our dog, Parker, "chilled" on the castle patio, while getting endless amounts of attention from the evening's harvest fest attendees. We bought a couple bottles of wine, and told Roxan we'd be in touch! Driving away, I knew Zac liked this place more than I did... and while I'd love to find a place that both of absolutely love... it may not happen. [We are different.] So, I proposed that IF we did end up having our wedding there, I would like to choose some really great places for the engagement sesh... including the beach, a barn or ranch... and other cool places around town. Like maybe Montana de Oro [where we got engaged last summer!]. He agreed that was a great idea. YAY! :)

Here are some great links of past weddings at Eagle Castle:

Link 1 - LindseyHAHNphotography
Link 2 - David Pascolla photography
Link 3 - Cameron Ingalls photography [Scroll down further on this page for "An Eagle Castle Affair" too!]

Night time shot

Day time shot

Rooftop area for ceremony and cocktail hour

The Library

Preggers: Chris & Ninah!

On Friday night, we were blessed with the opportunity to meet up with some good friends of ours, Chris and Ninah! They were driving up to San Jose, and staying the night at Ninah's parents before flying out to NY the next day. We suggested meeting up for dinner and bocce at Campo di Bocce. Who doesn't love a good game of bocce?! Zac and I had gotten to the restaurant a few minutes early of our reservation, so we grabbed our table and ordered a couple Peroni draft beers. Chris and Ninah arrived and joined us at our table. We planned on eating dinner, and then playing bocce. Campo di Bocce is awesome. You can eat, then play... play then eat... or eat while you play! Bocce any way you want it.

We suggested the Peroni to Chris and Ninah when they first got there. Chris ordered one.. and Ninah seemed to be waiting to decide what to drink. We all ordered meals, salads... and were checking out the desserts early on. The waiter came by to check on us.. and Ninah turned down an offer to order a beer or wine. I thought this to be odd, as normally they are both always down for a good drink with us, but didn't want to jump to conclusions! (I put it off in my head at the time that maybe they are saving money for their trip the next day to NY!) Later when our meals came, we had been deep in conversation, catching up... and Ninah (upon trying to explain her concern over some salmon she was eating possibly not being cooked all the way through) said, "Normally I wouldn't be concerned, but..." At this point, we KNEW something was up!! Zac and I both started to get excited... As Ninah about to tell us their big news... Zac turning bright red over excitement... It was a very, very exciting time to hear that our good friends are expecting!!! We are sooo excited about it, and cannot wait to see how things go leading up to the arrival of their baby girl in February.

Below is a picture of our friends, the soon-to-be-parents!

Congratulations Chris and Ninah!!! We are soo excited for you!

Engaged: Anissa and Brett!

My close friend Anissa is engaged!!! Brett proposed to her at a 3-D ultrasound for their upcoming baby!! How exciting!!! Congratulations Nissers and Bretters!

Upcoming Visit to SLO

Unfortunately, in our early October visit, we were unable to see Holland Ranch – this fabulous barn/ranch in the Edna Valley area because they were having a wedding late Sat afternoon and the property manager was going out of town early Sunday morning. We are hoping to view it in next weekend when we return to town for the Central Coast Bridal Show.

We are considering a few other places – Eagle Castle in Paso Robles, Castoro Cellars in Paso Robles… and are also open for suggestions.

Our hunt continues!

Venue: Tiber Canyon Ranch

After that we drove out to Tiber Canyon Ranch – an olive oil farm. Rustic. Outdoors. Woodsy. Wonderful. 


Tiber Canyon is run by a husband and wife. The husband showed us around the place. His wife was out of town for the weekend. We loved it. They have this great barn, a really nice layout for the ceremony and reception areas.. and a suuuper cute “bridal room.” They also had this adorable dog [a corgi!] following us around the property and fetching sticks as Zac threw them. We liked this place a lot. We could picture exactly what envision for our wedding here. The one things we missed at this location was the great vines that are at the wineries we’ve visited. So, we’ll see. It’s definitely high on our my list. [I think I liked it a bit more than Zac.]


Check out the barn:

The Bridal Dressing Room:

View of Dining Area and Ceremony Area:

Venue: Edna Valley Vineyard

Next stop: Edna Valley Vineyard. There was a wedding going on there that day, so were able to see exactly how things might be set up. We’d been to EVV before, and their wines had not won me over initially, but their beautiful views had.  So, we came back for the views. Their event coordinator, Tina, gave us a great tour of the facilities, and afterward we did a little wine tasting. This time around I really enjoyed the wines here. And, I know Tina would be an excellent wedding/event coordinator. She is very on top of her game! This is a good possibility as the place is GORGEOUS, but again, not a clear winner.


Check this LINK out to see some pics by David Pascolla from a wedding at EVV. I bet it was very a fun event!

Venue: Pear Valley Vineyard

After visiting Eos Winery, we hit up Pear Valley Vineyards. I had never heard of nor been to this place before. But I was browsing through a friend of a friend's pics on Facebook and had seen some great pictures taken there, and decided to check it out. Pear had some good things going for it – but as we soon learned also had one or two things that held us back from exclaiming, “this is the place!” Pear’s event coordinator showed us around the location. Absolutely gorgeous. They have this brand new HUGE building that is their tasting room, and an event room to the side.. with this really cute patio off of it [for that excellent wedding reception dancing that I am oh-so-overjoyed about]. They also have this great little “hill” – perfect with views for the ceremony. Turns out, since they are so new, they have not finished designing the ceremony hill, and are considering putting up clear plastic around this arbor thingy which is where the ceremony would take place. In my head I am picturing this would ruin the wonderful views up there, but without seeing the final product I don’t want to be too quick to make a judgement. Unfortunately, they don’t really have a time line of when the plastic will be installed. Wine tasting: the wine was good. Stay tuned.


We loved the building at Pear Valley:

And the reception room was gorgeous:

If we don't have our wedding here, I know we will be back to visit. 

Venue: EOS Winery

We were unable to meet with their wedding/event coordinator as she is not in on Saturdays. She assured me this would not be an issue, and it wasn’t. Zac and I showed up at Eos in Paso Robles [on 46 East] and as we pulled in the driveway I recognized the place immediately. Turns out I had been wine tasting there a couple years ago. I remember loving it at the time, and this was still true. We walked into the tasting room and everyone there was very friendly.. It was 10am, and we planned on viewing the property and of course, tasting some wine. That’s when we met Chuck [tasting room wine pourer extraordinaire]. Guess what? Chuck is the man! He showed us around the winery, showed us some photo books from weddings that the event coordinator [Meghan] had set out for us… and then he took us through one of the best wine tasting experiences we have had. [And, that's saying something as you all know, I've been through quite a few wine tastings.] Okay. So, our reactions go something like this: Location: great. Wine: excellent. What’s the one hang-up you may ask? In their wedding contract that I had received by email prior to our visit, it says something about having to rent your own porta-potties. ???!! I simply cannot picture myself having to use a porta-potty while in my wedding dress. And not to mention asking our 100 or so guests to use one that day either. But, I’m hoping there is some better solution than the blue porta-potties you see on construction sites, because that is exactly what I am picturing. At this point EOS could be a winner. I need to talk to Meghan first. Either way, I know Zac and I will be visiting EOS again someday, and possibly joining their wine club. As I said before.. Chuck is the man.


Great pictures from previous weddings at Eos:
This link got me interested in having a wedding at this venue in the first place. You can find it HERE.
A Blake Photography -- I absolutely love her work.

Wedding Venue Mania!

This past weekend we made the trek down to SLO to see some wedding spots.

We came away with pros and cons from each location, but didn’t have a clear “winner.”

See following posts about each venue we visited.