Our Venue Hunt Continues

After our first attempt at finding the perfect wedding venue had us doubting out choice to have our wedding in Los Angeles the misters and I regrouped and decided to come up with a more creative hunting strategy. We reasoned that with the overly inflated cost that typically accompany anything even remotely related to weddings that we would avoid any and all wedding related websites and magazines and instead choose to focus our search on city websites, craigslist and good old fashion driving around.

After a couple of weeks a lazily searching the web and making note of any spaces for rent during our time in the city we had compiled a pretty heft list available locations were finally being able to whittle the list down to 2 top contenders. The first one being the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Located in at the top of Baldwin Hills in Culver City the Scenic overlook is an amazing location that wants the beautiful views of the city while still having a natural setting to plan your wedding around.

My main concern regarding the Overlook was that at $2,400 for 4 hours the overlook was at the tippy top of our venue budget.

The second venue on our list actually lead us to our fabulous photographer who I discuss in a later post! The Rec Center Echo Park had everything we were looking for in an event space. Because the space is typically used as a photographer studio they owners allow for complete customization of the space including painting of walls and rearranging of any existing furniture.

Our main concern was the location of the space, Echo Park is one of the areas in LA that although up an coming can be a little off putting to some of our guest that may not be accustom to spending time in Los Angeles like we are. Also Rec Center offer no parking to visitors which meant that our guest would have to find parking in one of the metered lots located in the area.

After visiting the Rec Center the misters and I decided that although great spaces neither location offered us what we were looking for at a price that would make our wallets happy. At around the same time we were deciding that both venue options were going to be a no go for us S my wonderful bridesmaid/ubber talented florist asked if we would ever consider having our wedding in Riverside were my family resides and were we grew up. She mentioned that she had assisted her mother in setting up several wedding at the Riverside Museum of Art and that she was very impressed with the space.

Not one to pass up a possible venue lead I quickly emailed the museum coordinator and scheduled a site tour for the next week. Friends I have no words for the feeling I got when we viewed the location, it was simply perfect beautifully modern yet with a beauty that only older buildings have. Once we sat down with the museum coordinator to discuss pricing I almost died for us to be able to rent the whole 1st floor on the museum for 10 hours we would end up 200 bucks below our venue budget! I am beyond relieved to have found our perfect venue and cannot wait to party it up with our closest peeps in our little gem of a space. With out further adieu I present to you our venue the Riverside Museum of art!

Sorry for the sucky pics but we were so happy to find the our venue that I think we forgot how to work our camera! Crappy pic aside adore or no?