on the hunt for a reception venue/day 3.1 3.2

(we are still knee deep in interruptions here, people.)

four months later, we revisit our search for the reception venue. mom and frank visit yet again and we take them so a couple places that i just love love love. so, without further ado:

location #1 at 1pm:

the SmogShoppe

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first of all, love this! so pretty, so neat, so eco-friendly (they are LEED certified). The place used to be an actual smog-check center, but is now a special-events place. it has solar panels, vertical gardens, desert plants- it's awesome. look how awesome it is:

pros: awesome/fancy and would be a real interesting conversational piece at the reception. i mean, who has their reception at a reinvented smog-check center? no one! more pros: has a screen at one end of the room, has a dj station, led lights, some rocking bathrooms- it's just cute and kitchsy and awesome. (awesome count: 3)

cons: the kitchen is outside, pretty much right next to the open room where we'd be eating. so clean up and cooking would be exposed to all the guests. also. it's freaking expensive and they charge extra for little things, like the use of said kitchen. also they require a valet, so more cash.

the 'rents pretty much hated it. so the site manager, jeff, assured us that we'd like the sister site, the marvimon, much more than the smogshoppe. so off we went to:

location #2 at 2pm:

the Marvimon
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well, jeff was right. i loved this place so much more than smogshoppe. it's more intimate, more warm, freakin' brick and wood all over the place. le sigh. i was in heaven. to overuse the word, it was awesome (4). so full of potential. so, basically all the same pros as the smogshoppe and some interesting cons: the kitchen is right in the middle of the floor, so if we hired caterers, they'd be in the middle of everything. take a look.


casey was really not a fan of that. and as suspected, the moms hated it. so i was outvoted. but look at how neat it is! there is a goat's head on the wall, for pete's sake!

so this was a hard one, too folks. but never, fear, we did finally choose a reception locale. and it's the very next post!*

*maybe. there might be more interruptions. you never know with us.

on the hunt for a reception venue/day 2.4

the last stop of the day! plus it was in pasadena, so it simply had to be cool! on we went to-

location #4 at 3pm:

the Pasadena Civic Center
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so i probably need to provide some much needed background for this particular location. as i regularly peruse weddingbee.com, the pasadena gold room came up in one of the postings. and i fell in love.

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where have you been all my life!?!?

the hardwood floor, soft lighting, and check out the ceiling!! so yeah, i saw this and called the pasadena civic center immediately. and spoke to a lady about said room of wonder. i'm going to call her carolynn (it's not her real name). she unfortunately told me that the capacity for this particular room was only for 100, but that she had some new rooms being constructed and would i like to visit those? my answer was of course! if that room was any indication, then i would be in love with just about anything that came out of the civic center.
i think you can guess what happened when we actually visited. we arrived at our apointment time only to have to wait for half an hour because carolynn was late. when she finally did arrive, she told me i was pretty and then ushered us into a small conference room to go over rates, packages, etc. carolynn is a bubbly, hyper-active and tiny little Asian woman with a killer fashion sense. she talked a mile a minute- how great it was that i was seeing the venue with my parents, how quiet i was, how nice everyone else was. i might add that not once did she talk or even look at casey, except to tell him how pretty i was. i did inquire about looking at the gold room, but carolynn managed to talk us out of it, saying that since we wouldn't be able to fit there anyways, what was the point of going?

then she handed out our hard hats. i might add that the additional rooms were under construction, so hard hats were neccesary. after telling me how pretty i looked with the hard hat on, she led us to the construction area. at this point, my mom and frank and taken to fits of laughter every time carolynn opened her mouth. they casually drifted to the back of the group and fell quite behind, no doubt gossiping on my continuing misery. this woman did not stop talking the whole time. i was trying to keep an interested look on my face the whole time, but it was a losing battle. casey bravely kept up with me, despite carolynn acting like he wasn't there the whole time. once we got to the room, we were even more disapointed: it was a freaking banquet hall! complete with foldaway walls so we could choose the space we wanted + super ugly carpet and florescent lighting. as soon as we walked in, mom and frank lost interest and took to wandering around whilst i had to endure a twenty minute lecture on the value of the room and all the perks we get. after telling carolynn for the third time that we had to leave for another appointment, we finally exited said sorry building. mom and frank handed their hats to carolynn and took off for the car, leaving me with say our goodbyes. i tried to extrapolate myself from her clutches as quickly as i could, but not before she told me how pretty i was two more times.

as soon as i entered the car, we all erupted into laughter. it was a disasterous way to end our day of venue searching, but at the very least there was no argument about whether or not to hold the reception there. even if we were able to score the gold room somehow, i'm not sure it's worth it to go through carolynn again. we still tease each other about it to this day.