We've booked a location! It's official!

So on Tuesday Mike and I (with some help from the FILs) booked the Carmel Mission to exchange our wedding vows. I was beyond giddy when Liz told me that she'd pencil us in for the time slot. Immediately I called Mike to tell him all of the good news and ask questions (apparently we need a permission form to get married there...kind of confusing but we've got it all figured out now). We're both thrilled that we were able to book the Mission for Memorial Day weekend!
Next up - booking the reception venue. We're waiting to get a quote back from our first pick, La Playa Hotel. Our #2 pick emailed her quote earlier this week. Oh Em Gee...I just about died laughing when I saw the final estimate price. It was about $8,000 over what we wanted to spend. Don't get me wrong, the location was gorgeous but there was no lodging on site, you could only use their wines (it's a winery), no liquor is allowed, and you could only use their caterer even though he doesn't work for the winery. Mostly we were concerned about having to shuttle folks to a hotel after the reception and maybe after the ceremony too. The Mission is less than a mile from the La Playa and the La Playa is uber close to other lodging options. Now it's just a matter of waiting to receive the quote and then putting our deposit down on the place.

I'm crossing my fingers that the reception isn't too far out of our budget. Please, God, don't let the estimate say more than $15k.