How it all began

Bubss (my husband) and I are always waiting for our next “mini vacay” . We live in San Francisco and during the foggy summer months we are constantly packing up the car to go spend the weekend in the sun.

One weekend it was foggy and cold at our house, so I started looking for a cheap place to stay in the Russian River area and found the Dawn Ranch Lodge. We had the cutest room, our own private beach, and a view of the pool from our room.

When we started looking around, my first thought was that I would love to get married there. My heart pitter patted when I realized what I was thinking, but the excitement just kept growing... Everyone could stay in the rooms, enjoy themselves in the pool or the river during the day and party all night long. It would be perfect!

It seemed like it would be reasonably priced (our room for the night was only $99) and it was in Guerneville, how expensive could it be?

Now, mind you, we weren’t engaged yet. We were always talking about getting married, though, but Bubbs wanted to surprise me with a ring.

I immediately came home and looked up the price of holding a wedding there. It was WAY out of our price range. We didn’t even have a price range, but I knew that their base price for just the use of the property would bankrupt us.

It was at this point that I began my secret blog stalking and search for the perfect place to gather our families for an entire weekend. There had to be a campground or something in the hills in Northern California that could host our perfect weekend getaway wedding.

One of my favorite blogs was “A Practical Wedding”. I found a wedding that looked nothing like what I wanted, but the location seemed perfect. It was perfect, it is perfect, and rather than the engagement spurring the location search, it was the location that kick started our engagement.