Need Better Reception

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm trying to update this journal at least once a week, but hopefully I'll get into updating it twice a week or more.

So the most pressing order of business right now is finding a place to hold our reception. Since I have to have a church wedding ceremony, I was really hoping I could have our reception outdoors. Trees and flowers around us while we eat and dance sounds pretty and romantic. Especially since it'll be mid/late spring. But so many of the places around here like that are so expensive! Some of them have site fees for $2000 or $3000, and that's not including anything like tables or chairs or gazebos or what have you. Ridiculous! So I'm looking for more inexpensive alternatives.

There's a botanical garden here in Camarillo (who knew?) that sounds nice online and hosts weddings, but they haven't returned our phone calls. We might stop by there this weekend just to poke them and find out some information for ourselves.

We also called the local Park District. They had a nice sounding park in Camarillo Springs, but we'd have to be out of there by sunset because of coyotes. There's another one near the church that we could use, but I know that park and it can be very busy. I'd like it if it were more private and if there were no chance of soccer balls and pooping dogs disturbing us. Still, I haven't been there at dusk, so it might not be as bad or busy as I imagine it might be.

We're also going to look into Camarillo Ranch, which I hear has nice grounds. They charge a lot for their wedding packages, but I'm wondering if we have to have a package, cuz we don't need a lot of that crap. (I don't need use of their bridal changing room or a wedding arch or 250 chairs. Yeesh.) They also have different (cheaper) rates for use of the grounds, which is all we want, so I was thinking we could just not mention that it's for a wedding reception. Businesses charge an arm and a leg for wedding stuff because some brides can be so twinkle-eyed and naive and dead-set on everything being just perfect that they don't care how much it costs.

And then there's a place in Ventura, which is about 20 minutes from Camarillo, that sounds like it might be relatively inexpensive. But I'm wondering how out-of-towners will get over there from the church. It's not very far, but I'd like to save our friends and Sam's family some monetary grief if I can. I was thinking about renting a bus or something so fewer people would need to rent a car, but I don't know... That's added expenses, and we've gotta be careful with how many expenses we add up. I'll look into it, though...

But you know, if we end up having an indoor reception, I wouldn't mind too much, I guess. But I might bring out the "building trees from scratch" idea again. My brother Jay works at Lowes, so we could get the materials at a discount... I just don't know what we'd do with them afterward. (I'm not sure if I'm entirely serious about the trees. It'd be so cool, though!)

Any ideas on other things I could check for? I think I'm covering all my outdoor reception bases, (botanical gardens, nurseries, parks, traditional wedding sites...) but I'm running out of ideas.