It's been 18 days since our wedding and I always wanted to write down more about the whole process so we could remember everything years later. So let me start with the holy place where we vowed to be with each other for richer or for poor -
Wayfarers Chapel.
People thought that it might have taken us forever to decide on where to get married but we booked the Wayfarers within 5 days after our engagement. We saw this chapel on one of my favorite TV show: The O.C. and both of us fell in love with the chapel instantly. We joked about how we're going to get married there even before the engagement. To quote myself back then it was "If I ended up marrying anyone (so there's no pressure!), I'd get married at this beautiful place!" It was a no brainer after the engagement for us to make a decision. Chris remembered it. We set the date and then we booked the chapel without personally ever been there at all.
The chapel locates at the tip of Rancho Palo Verdes, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was designed by Lloyd Wright who is the son of the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The chapel is also called the Glass Chapel as its roof and walls are made with glasses which is the contemporary theme that we tried to infuse through out our wedding. As the warm sun shining through the glasses into the chapel, surrounded by flowers, trees and the ocean breeze, together with the chapel bell ringing signaling you that this is the moment, everyone there couldn't help but indulge in the atmosphere of happiness.
We made it down to LA 3 months after engagement for scouting our reception place and also visiting the Wayfarers Chapel. Our good friends Simon and Maggie went with us and thanks for their pictures that you see here. As soon as we arrived, we knew we made the right decision. (It's not like we could backout at all. =P) The view was just breathtaking. It was a clear day too. As you could see in the picture, even it wasn't at Spring time, it was just purely gorgeous. Bathing under the sun, the serenity simply crawled into mind while walking in the chapel. It was perfect.
The contribution to the chapel was $2500 and tax deductable but could not transferred from one couple to another. (So you'd better be sure!) I didn't know that $2500 for a ceremony facility rental is considered above average till much later. However, a little advice for future bride is, all the cost should be budgeted as a whole instead of individually. In our case, the chapel provided the reverend, musician and coordinator for the 2-hour event. Since it's so beautiful by itself, any extra floral decoration would just ruin it. Therefore, we didn't have to spend money on musician, reverend and floral decoration at ceremony which made the overal cost fairly reasonable. The ceremony usually won't take more than 20-25 minutes, so 2 hours is considered to be enough. However, as much as we love taking photos, it was very tight for us to do some wedding portrait, family photos and such on the day of. But quite frankly the wedding day itself is usually packed already no matter where you hold your ceremony/reception. I think it went pretty well for our day eventually.
Our guests already knew that we ended up choosing the reception place a little bit far from here. The story is worth another blog post so you'll know about it later. However, everyone made it! That's the most important part.
I want another different post about the actual wedding day. So we'll save the part about the actual ceremony for later.
