finally

"ADVICE: before you get engaged, find the venue you want to get married at." -Shannon

after looking and visiting more than 15 wedding venues (and looking at over 100 online) we finally figured out where we are going to get married!

the very first venue we looked at, Rancho Capistrano, was wonderful! except for the new owners... Saddleback Church now is renting the property after the Crystal Cathredral sold it...meaning we would now have to go through Saddleback Church to get married and also no wine would be allowed at the reception...also there was about 125 couples on the waiting list to get married there...so after much disappointment we decided we needed to find a new venue.

looking at many places in orange county and the wine country (temecula) we couldn't find that "perfect" venue...

some things we wanted:

-outside venue

-secluded from other surroundings

-options for us to bring in our own caterer

-not a "drive-thru" wedding, meaning "bring just your dress" type of places. they do everything for you, i want a little control..haha

temecula had a few that we liked...but we didn't have that firework feeling...so we decided to keep looking around.

Wiens Family Cellars: we loved this place!

(another beautiful place, but too much 'drive-thru' wedding feeling)

after a few more weekends looking at places in the orange county area, we still hadn't found a place. one saturday after we went and looked at 2 places that were not up to par we decided we would go to the place we first loved...the meanda grove. a couple we know had their fall time wedding here last septemeber...at the wedding i remember telling matt's mom that the wedding was perfect and that i would love to get married there. we didn't really think too much of this place due to it being in riverside and also wanting to find another venue...but after much searching we couldn't seem to find a place that gave us the same feeling as we had at the meanda grove.

the great thing about the meanda grove is that we can do our wedding how we want to! it is going to be great! we both have soooo many ideas!