Wedding Party: Matron of Honor

This bitch.

With her five year wedding anniversary coming up next month, and a seven month old baby in tow, no matter how much she denies it Bry is definitely my Matron of Honor. (Make sure you call her that, too. She just loves it.)

And she's classy as hell. That's wine in her cup.

Why pick her, you might ask. Well, reader, when you have a twin you tend to pick them for everything because they can't say no! Also, I like a good challenge so it seemed like a great idea to pick someone who would be out of the country for nearly my entire engagement so that I end up doing almost everything myself.

Definitely NOT using this as a chance to share bad/weird pictures of her...

I'll never know anyone as long as I'll know Bry so I get to use the most amount of ancient guilt. "Bry, call so and so about having my bachelorette party there because you made me join track with you in 2001."

Bry's first baby.

I'm giving her a hard time because she's not here, but she's already proven to be more useful than I was at 22 as her maid of honor. Now we know all the things I should have been doing. Live and learn. We'll get this whole wedding thing down by Alice's wedding.

She's basically a grown up already.

The Venue

With 102 days left til the wedding (Does anyone else's heart start racing more and more as that number shrinks?), let's take a look at the venue!

The Depot Hotel

September 2014, immediately after Steven proposed, I began looking at venues for us. And, despite what it looks like, this was actually one of the cheapest options I found. We decided to view it in person and made an appointment.

The first picture you find online looks like this:

How could anybody turn THIS down?

We went in and talked to the owner, Gia, and she told us about their history. The Depot Hotel was actually a hotel back in the 1920's but ended up being abandoned. In the 1980's, Gia and her husband bought it and turned it into a restaurant. We initially thought that since it was formerly a hotel that we would be able to make a hotel block here and have guests stay but this is not the case. I have no idea what lives upstairs but the hotel part of the building is no longer in use. 

Since we're having an evening wedding, it will look similar to this but we have too many guests
to fit them all where they are seated in this picture.

We were looking for a venue that would kill as many birds with one stone as we could get. Not only does the Depot Hotel cater but they deal with all of the set up and take down of tables and chairs, and they act as our venue for the ceremony as well as the reception. Oh, and did I mention an unlimited bar? (Your options are limited by our pocketbook, sorry, but you can keep ordering until you're too smashed for them to serve!) 

We have so many people coming, a handful of you will get the pleasure of sitting inside.
Air conditioning anyone?

We liked that we got a giant list to choose from to customize our food, drinks, and hors d'ouerves. You can rest assured knowing that everything you consume during our reception was hand picked! Follow the food link for an idea of what the food will be like:

Food!

While Bry was visiting from China, I suggested we eat dinner there so we could show her the venue. The prices deterred us and we ended up at Applebee's instead. 

I'll save eating here for the big day.

You can follow one last link to look at more pictures to get a feel for the evening. Our theme (if we had to name one) is vintage. So, dress for a very classy evening but dress comfortably for the hot July weather. Sorry, gentlemen, but you should still be in a tie.

Pictures!

Only 102 days. I'm not freaking out, you're freaking out.

Wedding Block

With only 115 days left to go, I should probably let you all know that we created a hotel block. Since so few people are coming from far out of town, we only made a small block. Now, let me explain my reasoning behind this hotel:

Steven and I aren't leaving for our honeymoon until the week AFTER the wedding. The only other cruise option had us leaving the day  OF the wedding... from Texas... so we pushed it off a week. That meant that after the wedding we had several options. When discussing our options, the conversation went like this:

Rachel: Where should we stay after the wedding?
Steven: We could just come home?
Rachel: That's so depressing!
Steven: We could get a hotel room?
Rachel: I'll see what our options are.

So, about year ago after booking out honeymoon, I began looking into hotels we could have hotel blocks in and rooms for ourselves. I went city by city to see what our options are. With the wedding in Sonoma it seemed like the obvious choice to stay there. HA. The prices immediately made me change my mind. I looked at a map to see what other cities were options. Of course, there was Santa Rosa. Hotels in Santa Rosa are the most reasonably priced but if we were going to get a hotel room in Santa Rosa, why not just come home? Again, depressing. Petaluma seemed like the best option. It is close to Sonoma but far enough away that the prices are a little better.

The trouble with the hotels we found was that they either look like this:

And, surprisingly enough, the cheap hotels ran out of rooms before I could set up a hotel block!

Or like this:

Believe it or not, there were more expensive hotels we could have chosen for our hotel block. 

So, even though it seems incredibly expensive, the hotel we picked was actually the middle of the road in terms of prices we were offered AND each room had a small discount added for being part of a block. I added nine rooms for people to book, fully expecting less than that to even book them, and one larger room for Steven and I to book. This room, one of only four in the hotel, had to be big enough for me to get ready with my ladies the morning of the wedding. So, imagine my surprise when someone booked that room before we could do it!

Why would someone ELSE want a room THAT big and $100 extra dollars for the weekend???

.

Fear not, though, I added one of the other three rooms that size left which were luckily still available. Needless to say, though, some crazy person attending my wedding will also be staying in a huge room but for no good reason... 

In any case, if you need a room for the night, you can join our block!

Follow this link to book a room!