My Wedding Report

The choice of your ceremony and location is a big decision. It is where a large part of the budget goes and will help set the atmosphere for guests. Your location can be really formal or traditional, really casual and laid back or somewhere in between.

After I finished summer school last year our big thing on the “to do list” was to set the ceremony and location. We knew we wanted to get married in San Diego and I began to research.

Here is some of the criteria we started with:

• Able to accommodate 225-250 people
• Ceremony and Reception at the same location: We did not want our guests to have to drive in between or worry about people getting lost. In Mr. Ducky and I’s experience it is really nice when it’s a “one stop shop.” We also have elderly guests and wanted to make travel as easy as possible
• The place did not require us to use their pastors or pay extra to use their own officiant
• We preferred an outdoor ceremony
• Somewhere coastal would be wonderful
• Not too far south in San Diego as we had a lot of guests coming in just for the day from Orange County and LA (This made it difficult as many of the gorgeous locations in San Diego are further south in Mission Bay, downtown and Coronado)
• Not your usual big conference room: Mr. Ducky and I have done a lot of event planning and wanted to something kind of different that had the “energy” and charm.
• Affordable!

Before we even visited a location I basically investigated every venue in San Diego. (So if you are considering San Diego please let me know because I have a lot of information!) A tough point was the size of our group. A lot of the smaller and more unique locations had max. capacities of 180 or lower. San Diego is an expensive area to get married in and I found that some of my favorite locations were going to exceed our budget. However, one weekend Mr. Ducky, my parents and I went out to go look at some locations in person that seemed promising. I didn’t take pictures myself (I know I’m horrible and forgot my camera) but I was able to find some pictures with research.

Disclaimer: I wrote some mini reviews about our experiences and opinions about the different sites. Please only take them as that and that they may not fit your own opinions about these locations. While each site is wonderful, they did not quite fit what we working for and I tried to describe why in the summaries below.

La Costa Resort and Spa

Picture from Here Comes the Guide

Picture from The Wedding Compass
For those of you that aren’t familiar with La Costa Resort and Spa it is a luxury resort in San Diego and is basically a mini city. I had not realized how much it had grown since I was last there. There were a couple of things at La Costa that did not work for us. First, their regular ceremony site did not seem as wonderful as the rest of the resort. It was pretty small in between hotel rooms and there was a road in the back. They said there would be no cars on it, but I thought the black asphalt still looked odd. There is the orchid terrace for ceremony sites that overlooks the golf course, but it cost quite a bit extra and wasn’t really above and beyond our expectations to pay for that. There was one ballroom that would accommodate our group size and it was nice, but they couldn’t turn the lights on so we didn’t get the best look. The big thing that made us decide against it was how “touristy” it was. Mark did not want to have a bunch or random hotel guests onlooking or our guests having to go through the busy shop areas to get to the ceremony and location sites. I think we decided that after this location, something a little more private was important. If you want to see more pictures here is a slide show I found from the Wedding Compass.

La Jolla Woman’s Club


La Jolla Woman’s Club is a great venue down in La Jolla near the ocean that was very affordable. It is actually a historical site so it’s a little older but has a lot of charm. (My Aunt and Uncles wedding reception was here and according to my parents it still looks the same!) You can bring in catering, rentals everything. We like the site but the main problem was it would be a real tight squeeze to fit our group. We’d have to have the ceremony on the front lawn (as opposed to the side garden where smaller ceremonies take place) which was right next to a busy street where people were walking. The cocktail hour would be split in two locations and even the reception would be tight. If you are having a smaller wedding and want a simple charming location to bring all your own vendors to, I recommend you check this out.

Four Seasons Aviara



Photos from Here Comes the Guide

Photo from Jennifer Dery Photography

This venue was beautiful, especially the ceremony site! It was simply too expensive. One of the assistants showed us around and told us to plan on spending $200-250 per person on food and beverage alone. This did not include a crazy expensive minimum for a Saturday night event. Also, the assistant that showed us around was kind of “snobby” but the main director I talked to before seemed much nicer. If you have a big budget I recommend it. It’s a little more formal and traditional but very pretty. All of the pictures I have seen from weddings here turn out beautifully!!

So based on these few locations our “criteria” was changing. We wanted something more private that was sheltered from public onlookers and hotel guests. An indoor reception area was a “must” so that we would not have to worry about Mark or our guests overheating during the summer. Also, we wanted to find a location with a great staff that we felt like would be enjoyable to work with.

So stay tuned for Part II…

What do you think so far? Did you find your criteria changing as you looked at different sites?