Category: Wedding Receptions

A chicken coop and water tower used for events? As the location scout for Here Comes The Guide, I just couldn’t resist exploring this anomaly of a Wine Country reception venue/event site, situated along the Gravenstein Trail just outside Sebastopol, also known as “the Berkeley of Sonoma County.” How, I wondered, could this former working farm possibly host a wedding or corporate event?

My sister Sandra is getting married in October 2008 and Tyler, her boyfriend (he hates the word fiancé) has family in Mendocino so they travel there frequently. When they started planning their wedding there wasn’t even a question about where it would take place: The Little River Inn in Mendocino.

With just 20 days to plan their wedding—from first phone call to the ceremony—my super-capable friend Debbie, along with her betrothed, Richard, pulled off their own wedding at their Alamo home last week.

I’ve attended two weddings this year where the bride and groom decided to move away from the traditional guest book and mix it up a bit with a Wish Tree. The Wish Tree is a Dutch wedding custom where guests are given a piece of paper, either shaped like a leaf…

When planning your event, don’t forget that you really can make anything happen in California. Wanna get married on set at a movie studio? Go for it!

The ceremony and reception took place in the same space, so it was a complicated and intricate process to turn the space around quickly. The whole thing had to happen while the guests were enjoying their appetizers and cocktails, so we had just about 75 minutes to make the space perfect for the reception.

Did you know that eclectic is the new black? According to Event Designer Linda Kay for New York Food Company, matchy-matchy is yawny-yawny. Mixing up your reception with non-identical place settings…