venue

A Pelican Hill Wedding

Photos, Purple, venue, Wedding

On my previous post I shared with my friend’s candy buffet well now I would like share with you some photos I took of her special day.

Isn’t the ocean beautiful from here?  The Pelican Hill has an amazing view especially on a clear day. 

My friend’s wedding was outside and was fortunate that it was a lovely southern California day.  
I’m obsessed with clean bathrooms that I couldn’t resist taking a photo especially since nobody was there.
I got to hold the bouquet for a tad while my friend used the restroom and I couldn’t resist taking a snap of these beautiful calla lilies especially because purple is my favorite color. 
Simple but lovely.
The maid of honor and my friend’s oldest daughter as her she sees her mom walk down the aisle. 
The beautiful bride and groom.
I just had to take a photo of her train.
She looked like a goddess. 
The centerpieces were just as lovely as everything else and I still can’t believe that I didn’t win one. 
The gold table setting matched the rest of the golden color scheme.
The only dancing at the wedding was done by these Khmer dancers as a way to honor the bride and groom.
If you’ve read through my blog before you must know my obsession with popcorn and I thought it was lovely that they served it on the appetizer. 
The amazing and delicious cake that they served at the wedding. Behind the cake was the candy buffet that I swear really was there but you can’t see it from this photo.  
Overall the wedding was a different experience for my hubby and I since we are used to loud parties that don’t end early.  I would describe the wedding as beautiful, enlightening, and lovely.  The couple did not accept gifts but instead opted to accept donations for an organization they run that provides rice to the Cambodian population.  During dinner they presented videos of the couple doing humanitarian work in Cambodia and it was refreshing to see how these two individuals in such a short time of knowing each other found harmony in helping others.  To me my friends that is something that you can’t put a price on.  I wish the lovely couple a long and happy marriage and hope that they continue to do good in this world.  
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Eat, Drink, and be Married…

reception, venue, Wedding

When we were trying to figure out what our overall feeling for our wedding was going to be we realized that it had to be something that was exactly us even if it meant that it might be nontraditional. We knew that our ceremony was going to be in a Catholic Church and like I previously mentioned here it took quite some work to get that scheduled.

The ceremony is going to be a very traditional mass which is going to be done in Spanish. I will share with you later what the details are going to be surrounding that. Until then lets move on to our what our next focus is, the reception. We went to look at a couple of places and I ruled out SEVERAL others without visiting them. We soon realized that the types of venues we were looking at all revolved around food. This was like an epiphany to us at last our search was over. We decided that our our wedding was going to be food based more than party based like is traditionally done in my family. It seems to me that food at any wedding or quincianera for our family is an afterthought. I have often complained that all our family ever serves at weddings is the “traditional” Mexican dishes which include: birria, arroz, frijoles, and pico de gallo.

Don’t get me wrong I LOVE this food especially when my family makes it themselves but I am just feed up with the same thing over and over again. I had to also consider that my FI is not Mexican but Guatemalan and his family doesn’t necessarily have the same tradition. Another consideration is that my cousin is getting married a couple of weeks before me and they will be serving this for their meal. My other cousin is getting married the week after me and I’m pretty sure they will be doing the same. Since our wedding is food based as apposed to party focused like my cousins then it seems fitting that we go with something different.

We then began our search for a restaurant to have our reception at. We needed to find a restaurant we both enjoyed and that had great dessert (I’ll explain later why this is a must). The search came to a halt when we both agreed to go with the The Cheesecake Factory . Yes, this is not a mistake we went with a restaurant we trust and that hasn’t let us down so far.

I’m excited that I get to step outside the box and not serve the “traditional” wedding dish and go for something new that hopefully everyone will enjoy. We have our venue and the best part is that we were able to rent out the whole floor. The way that this works is that the restaurant is in the first floor and our reception will be held in the second floor. We opted to go for the entire floor because we don’t want another party going on at the same time as ours. The restaurant has private bathrooms, an elevator to access it, and even a small dance floor. I love music so we are definitely going to have a DJ and since I’m Mexican-American we are also having a mariachi during the cocktail hour. Yay! We finally have a venue trying to convince my family of this is a whole different story I will continue at a different time.

Oh and it is cheaper for us to go with this venue and pay a floor fee than it would have been to go with a different venue. I will update the final cost after I figure in all the details of what we are having.