Fairytale Wedding?

Years before Zac popped the big question, we had taken a trip to Paso Robles with family to see Daughtry perform at the Mid State Fair. Before heading to the concert, we went wine tasting at a few of the wineries in the area. One of the stops we made on our winery crawl was Eagle Castle Winery.

I fell in love with this place. The rolling hills, the big gate entrance, the moat surrounding the building, and its large wooden doors. It was beautiful. While looking around I noticed a table with a wedding photo album and some pamphlets with contact information. They host weddings?! Amazing. From that day on when I envisioned our wedding, I pictured Eagle Castle.

I had looked at photos of Eagle Castle Winery weddings online and they looked really beautiful. So after we got engaged, I decided to contact Eagle Castle Winery and get some information about booking the winery for our wedding. We wanted to have a spring wedding so we asked to get details for a May wedding on the rooftop terrace for about 100-120 people.

A few days later I received an email from their events coordinator with the details. To have the wedding on a Saturday in May, we were looking to spend about $90 a person. This was for a limited menu, a no host bar and did not include the price of a coordinator the day of the wedding. Unfortunately for the items we would want/need to add on, it was just going to be too expensive.

Zac thought for sure that I would insist that we find a way to make it work, since I had talked about it for so long. I guess he thought that my heart was set on it. Afer reading the details of the email I just laughed. It was obviously out of our price range. It definitely made me stop and think about why I liked that venue so much in the first place. No doubt it is a beautiful location....but really, that's all it is.

While it is certianly a pretty place, a fairytale wedding was not really what I had pictured. I have never been the girl who wanted to be in a ball gown wearing a tiara on my wedding day. Also, the atmosphere calls for a more formal affair and that really doesn't reflect the relationship that Zac and I have. We are silly and carefree and our wedding should mirror that. The wedding is about us, not the location.We both agree that we want our guests to feel comfortable and enjoy themselves instead of feeling too formal or awkward.

So, while we will still enjoy visiting Eagle Castle for some wine tasting, we've decided to find another location for our big day.