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In my last post I left you back at ground zero, with both Mr. Cola and I not on the same page with what we wanted in a wedding location, and all my pre-screened beautiful winery locations rejected because the price tags were just too high.
So I began researching locations yet again, looking at every single posting on theknot.com and herecomestheguide.com, and any other sites I could find, looking for something that met most of our criteria. Mr. Cola wanted something more causal and laid back than the wineries I'd liked so much, and I wanted something with an outdoor ceremony and dinner location, preferably with a view or beautiful surroundings. And it all had to be for under about $5500. Believe me, this is a tall order in the Bay Area!
So after a week or two of research and reaching out to site managers for pricing info, I'd found two locations that could be contenders. The Mountain Terrace in Woodside:
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The Mountain Terrace was only $4100 for the rental with the on site ceremony fee and had a great view of the bay through the redwood trees. It really reminded me of some of our favorite camping spots in Big Sur and at Big Basin Redwood State Park.
.....so from the title of this post (and my profile!), you can probably guess that TMT is the location we picked! But just for the record, I'll talk about the other contender, Bella Montagna, in San Jose:
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Bella Montagna had a great view, and was $5500 for the rental fee (but allowed BYBO, so the cost would have come close to TMT). However, we never even went and looked at Bella Montagna in person. Why, you ask? Well, sometimes you just know. We knew that The Mountain Terrace had everything we were looking for. And with that, I'll leave you with some pretty pictures I took on our visit:
(all pictures taken by me. I MUST have a picture of me swinging with my dress on!)
How many of you have gone with your gut feeling, and just known your wedding location was right for you?
Finding our venue was at first a struggle, but turned out to be one of the easiest wedding decisions we've had to make so far. It was probably around summer of 2007 that I started dreaming of wedding locations around Silicon Valley. Of course, we weren't engaged at that point, and hadn't discussed what we each wanted yet, but I was pretty set on a winery. There were so many beautiful ones, like Clos la Chance Winery in Morgan Hill:
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And Byington Winery in Los Gatos:
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As well as Thomas Fogarty Winery in Woodside:
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However, I soon learned just how expensive the wineries in the Bay Area were! Not only were most in the $8k-9k range for just the rental fee, all required you buy only their (expensive) wine, and some didn't even allow hard liquor.
I did all this research back in 2007, and then tabled it for two years until we got engaged this past spring, at which time I sat down with Mr. Cola and discussed what we both wanted in our wedding. I wanted something elegant and chic, he wanted kegs and pizza. Hmmm. We were not exactly on the same page. I then busted out one of my many sample budgets, and we quickly agreed that the cost for my dream winery locations were just too high. Byington Winery was almost doable, budget-wise, but the ceremony location is up about 100 steps on a hill, which would be impossible for my dad and grandpa to climb, so that was cut from the possibilities too. We were back at ground zero.
Did budget constraints come into play when you were choosing your wedding location?
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