Martina and Dave celebrated a Real Winery Wedding at Gershon Bachus Vintners Estate in Temecula, Riverside County, Southern California. This Inland Empire wedding in the wine country was a dream come true for this fun and loving couple. The photography was captured with elegance by Hulse Photography a Temecula photographer available throughout California.
How long did you plan the wedding after the proposal?
We had a 17 month engagement, but after we secured some of the big details (wedding date, venue, and DJ) we took some time, for better or worse, before digging in to the many, many other details.
The top 3 challenges/difficulties of planning the wedding?
1. Thinking of logistics to make things easier for family and friends traveling long-distance for the wedding
2. Balancing plans that will satisfy family/friends vs. plans that will satisfy the bride and groom.
3. Pacing the planning process appropriately across the engagement. For a long engagement, it can seem like you have a ton of time, but if you don’t plan properly in the beginning, it can seem like the engagement is never-ending but that you’re still not making necessary progress in the planning process.
The top 3 most fun/easiest parts of planning the wedding?
1. Visiting wedding venues. While this is often the biggest decision for the wedding day and can seem the most stressful, it’s fun to visit locations because they really court you. An extra perk is if you’re considering wineries for your venue, because you get lots of free wine tastings!
2. Food tasting. At our venue, we knew we only had one catering vendor option, so we got to relax and enjoy the many delicious food options available in order to narrow down our selections.
3. Asking people to be part of the wedding party and making the website. It’s a great opportunity to recognize your closest friends and family and ask them to stand up beside you on the big day, and it’s fun to highlight them, your personal couple story, and other exciting aspects of the wedding weekend on the wedding website.
What fun/unique feature of your wedding made you the proudest?
With so many people coming in from out of town and knowing that the wedding day itself would fly by, we hosted a a pre-party at a local bar after the rehearsal dinner. It gave everyone an opportunity to spend more time together and made us feel less stressed about finding an opportunity to connect individually with all of our guests on the wedding day. We also chose to do some of our bridal party photography and a first look before the ceremony and managed to do so in multiple locations. This allowed us to have a photo shot list prepared for the cocktail hour, so we were able to quickly get some great pictures with a variety of groups of guests during a beautiful sunset.
If you had it to do over, what would you change, add or do differently?
We would try to map out a task list for every week of the engagement. Everyone’s busy and there’s so much to do for a wedding, that it can seem daunting to even tackle small items. When that spirals over a few weeks/months, it can become even more overwhelming. We also wish we would have taken more moments during the reception to step into a corner together and just take in everyone and everything that was happening.
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