The plan that stuck

After deciding not to elope, I spent a hour on the phone with my mother talking about what I really wanted in a wedding. The most important thing was to have the people I love there to celebrate with me, which, let's face it, is the underlying reason for the wedding/reception tradition in the first place.

Armed with that new assurance, we began to plan. What we really wanted was a small, casual backyard wedding, but we didn't know anyone in town who had a backyard we could use. Then my mom had the brilliant idea of renting a vacation house for the weekend, having our out of town relatives stay there, and host the ceremony and reception in the backyard.

We seized on the idea, and, since we live in an incredibly beautiful state, started looking at vacation homes in several areas. We found a house we loved 200 feet from the beach, with plenty of room for our family and party, and some great places to do some of the wedding photos. We were pretty much decided, and I called the owner to see if she would let us do a small wedding there, but she was just really nasty to me, which turned me off of the whole house, despite the beach view and beautiful spiral staircase and rooftop deck.

That was definitely my favorite place on the coast, so we began looking into central Oregon, in the Bend/Sunriver area, which is known for its luxurious rental homes for the ski season, a benefit for us, because our wedding would be in their off season. We found one that we like, and we're currently talking to the owners about renting it, but there is another we like even more.

In Hood River there is a gorgeous house that we really want to rent. It has plenty of room, a spacious downstairs, and, the best part, a private waterfall grotto. Ridiculous right? Well, so is the price. The nightly rate isn't too steep, considering the number of people we'll have rooms for, but they want to charge us an extra $1000 to do our wedding there, simply because we'll have about 15 more people there than the house is designed to sleep.

But, we really love the place (and so does my father, who, it turns out, is planning on paying for the majority of the wedding. who knew?), so we're trying to talk them into something a little more reasonable. Ultimately, it's their house, but I don't know if I could justify that much extra for a few more people. I also can't imagine trimming my guest list anymore.

That's been the only bump in the plan so far though. I ordered my dress and we asked a friend of ours to cater, my mom is taking care of cake and flowers, and we're moving forward pretty smoothly. I just wish the house owners would email us back.