The search continues

Last Thursday and Friday Dave and I had a chance to go look at some more venues. Let me tell you about them...
The first one we went to was the Orange Hill restaurant in Orange.  As you probably gathered from its name, it is a restaurant in Orange up on a hill. The restaurant is really pretty and the banquet room has huge windows that show off a killer view of the city below. They also have a place where you can hold a ceremony outside, but it seems like it would be rather tight on space with the number of people we are expecting. Another problem is that I am terrified of heights and it made me ill just driving up the steep narrow road to the restaurant.

After Orange Hill, we traveled to Fullerton, not to far from my school, where there is another lovely restaurant up on a hill.  The Summit House is an English style restaurant with a park right next to it where ceremonies can be held. I absolutely love the red door on the front of this place. Here are some photos.

On Friday we started out our day at the Reef in Long Beach. This place is a restaurant with an awesome view of Long Beach from across the water. We really like Long Beach for a wedding location; we've had some good times in Long Beach. The restaurant gives you lots of options as far as banquet rooms and ceremony locations. It was really pretty and was in our price range, but I have to admit that it didn't sweep me off my feet. One issue was that the ceremony locations were outdoors. I have a problem with getting cold easily and having an outdoor ceremony in February is kind of risky with the weather. Here are a few pictures of the ceremony locations.

After the Reef we moved on to the Ebell Club. This venue is a historic building in Long Beach only a few blocks from the beach and from Dave's old apartment. I actually had been there before for my cousin's wedding and loved it. The lady, Liz, we talked to was very professional and she had even been married there herself. Talking to her we learned that she had very high standards for the events that take place there. The venue works exclusively with the top caterer in Orange County. We really liked Liz, the history of the building and think that the building itself is beautiful. One aspect that I really love is the bride's room. That was pretty high up there on my priority list when looking at venues. We had an overall great feeling about the place. I didn't take a ton of pictures of the place, but here is one that shows the backdrop for the ceremony.

The last place that we went to honestly isn't even worth mentioning. The lady who we spoke to just wasn't as great as Liz, she was weird and disheveled. The place just wasn't for us. So those are all the venues we've visited. Last night we sat down and spread out all of our brochures, looked at our pros and cons of each place and crunched some numbers. Our final decision is forthcoming.