Are You My Venue? #2: Orfila Vineyards

[The {permanent} tent all lit up with globe lanterns.]

[The ceremony site overlooking the vineyard and mountains.]

[You can also have tables set up under the grape arbor, which I think looks very pretty. And, how great are those pumpkins??]

[Here you can see the dance floor and the chivari (chiavari? shi-vahr-ee?) chairs that can be rented. The boy actually cracked me up during the venue appointment by asking "What are Chee-uh-vahr-ee chairs?"]

[All photos (c) Orfila Vineyards]

Today was the second venue that I visited and the boy (yay!) came with me. We headed north to the Orfila Vineyards in Escondido, just minutes down the road from the Wild Animal Park. I think we chose an unfortunate day to visit, because it had just rained so the grounds looked a little mucky and the sky was grey. BUT we did have a great appointment and had lots of photos to look at so we could envision what wine country would look like in June. It would look gorgeous.

There are a lot of positive aspects of this venue: 1) the tent where the reception would be held is permanent. It comes with the site fee, which is pretty reasonable in comparison to other places I've seen online. 2) the site fee also comes with valet parking (wheeee!) 3) they already have rental packages to choose from, so we would not have to search for an outside rentals company. 4) the bar quote is pretty reasonable, and they understood that 50% our guests would not be drinking. 5) Emma, the event coordinator who gave us a tour, was so nice and answered all of our questions. She didn't balk when I asked more specific $$ questions and she was just very relaxed and made us feel at ease. 6) the boy liked the pinot he tried.

And then there's the bad: 1) I would really like to have the option to choose my own caterer, but Orfila, like every other venue in town, has a list I have to choose from. 2) It is 30 miles inland and may be very hot in the summer. I don't want the guests to melt during the ceremony.

3) This is a concern for all San Diego venues that I did not mention for the Darlington House. Since we are from N. California, everyone we know still lives up north. Therefore, we'd be making everyone, perhaps 90% of our guests, travel just for our wedding.
How badly do we want it in San Diego? And, would people actually show up to our wedding if we had it in San Diego? Would everyone hate us for having to fly down south for the weekend? Is it selfish to make a majority of our guests come to us?

Bottom line, Orfila Vineyards is a very pretty venue and we liked our meeting with the event coordinator. We've got five more venue appointments (holy cow) so this is definitely on the 'maybe' list.

The boy told me immediately after the appointment that he would be very happy if we had our wedding there. We shall view more venues and see.