Enter Allison Van Every of Allison Weddings. Allison is an amazing wedding coordinator with decades of experience in the industry and the Macalusos have had the pleasure of working with her on two of their family weddings. From the moment we were engaged Rosemary began encouraging us to work with her. I, revealing my true Taurus colors, began our wedding planning process extremely resistant to the idea of a wedding planner. After all, I am a SUPER EVENT PLANNING PROFESSIONAL and did NOT need any help. Humph.
(My image of myself as Super Wedding Planning Woman)
Ha… what a joke.
After a month of going it alone and finding our goal still very much out of reach, I decided to swallow my pride and give Allison a call. I am sooooo happy I did. After about five minutes I started to see the value in working with a professional coordinator. She listened closely to all of the things that I was saying; the kind of wedding we hoped to have, the look and feel of our location, and the loose theme we were going to be incorporating into the day (more about that later). From that conversation, Allison made some suggestions of places I had never even heard of despite all of my research. I couldn’t believe it! Someone actually cared about what WE wanted and then made informed recommendations of places that matched OUR vision? Who had ever heard of such a thing?!
Unfortunately, we still had one major hurdle to jump before we landed on our final dream venue. One of the great venue suggestions Allison had made was Kennolyn’s Hilltop Hacienda. Located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Hilltop Hacienda is a truly romantic place to get married. It is a Spanish-style house complete with a darling courtyard, a view of the Pacific Ocean, and plenty of outdoor photo-worthy event spaces. The whole place practically screams old world class. Check, check, and check. In addition to the Hilltop Hacienda, Kennolyn also has the Stone Village, a grouping of 26 cabins that can be rented out for a whole wedding weekend package so that all of our guests could stay together on the property. It was all too good to be true. Problem was? It was.
(The Hilltop Hacienda)
After several visits, email interactions, and phone calls with Kennolyn, Joe and I were fairly certain that we were ready to seal the deal. We were getting really excited at the possibility of having the whole village property just to ourselves for the entire weekend. We only had one deal-breaker; we had to taste their food before we would sign on the dotted line.
Now we didn’t think this was too much to ask given the fact that Kennolyn would have been serving our guests six meals over the course of the wedding weekend including both the rehearsal dinner and wedding dinner. If the food was crap, we were going to suffer six times. For some reason beyond our comprehension, Kennolyn was unwilling let us try the food before we signed the contract (red flag, much?). Apparently, they have one weekend all year when all the wedding couples get together and taste the food at one time. Conveniently, this weekend took place three months after we would have signed our contract. Say WHAT??
When it came to this point, Joe and I just couldn’t budge. Not only are we foodies who have high standards, but we were also alarmed that Kennolyn refused to accommodate what we thought was a fairly minor request. If they wouldn’t do this for us, despite the fact we were about to rent out their whole property for the whole weekend, what else wouldn’t they do? In the end, after much back and forth, we had to pull the plug on the Hilltop Hacienda. We were heartbroken but knew that we had to trust our gut.
Unfortunately, we had wasted almost an entire month on the back and forth with Kennolyn. So now we were TWO months into the process and STILL didn’t have a venue. Disaster! Would we ever be able to find a place to get married?
