Laura Hooper

Adventures of a Bride-to-Be: Sarah & Ben ~ Week 15

February 14th, 2012

As I’ve said before on this blog, the most important thing to me and my family at my wedding is the music. My sisters and I grew up dancing around the house with our family and we believe that if the music makes people dance and have a good time, no matter what else goes wrong the wedding will be a success!

Since Ben and I have been so busy in the past couple months, him with business school and me with my job, my parents have been doing a lot of the planning for my wedding (of which I am ETERNALLY grateful). They received a DJ company recommendation from a friend and heard that the company was having a DJ open house in Orange County and offered to check it out for us. Unfortunately I was travelling for work and Ben had class that night or we would have loved to have gone, the music is the fun part of wedding planning!

The company is called Invisible Touch and they have been around for about 20 years. They regularly have open houses that are set up like an actual wedding. Drinks and appetizers are served and each DJ in the company gets up and introduces him/herself and plays a sample of what they would play at a wedding or event and then guests are invited to talk to each DJ and figure out which one would work for them.

My parents immediately liked one of the DJs after hearing his intro and speaking to him afterward. I have not gotten his name yet, but apparently he was on American Idol twice and is a very accomplished singer! He knows a lot about all types of music (my dad was very concerned about this as he considers himself a music buff) and he knows what to play to get the crowd movingJ My parents are going to send me his information so that Ben and I can meet with him and decide if we want to book him (which I am guessing we will). The company also offers lighting options and an MC at an additional price. What really sold my parents is that the DJ and owner did not oversell him on the lighting. My parents told them that I was getting married at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club and they said we would only need minimal lighting because they had worked at that venue many times before and since the ceilings are not that high a little lighting goes a long way.

I can’t wait to meet this DJ and talk about the music! This really makes the wedding that much more real. I can’t wait to dance the night away!!

Adventures of a Bride-to-Be: Sarah & Ben ~ Week 14

February 7th, 2012

As our wedding gets closer and closer, I have been forced to really think about some large details that I have somewhat neglected so far, the biggest of these being the actual ceremony location!

As I’ve said in earlier blog entries, we have reserved the Newport Harbor Yacht Club on Friday August 17th for the reception. This is because it goes with the preppy, nautical theme of our wedding. While I would love to also get married there, the Yacht Club can accommodate our 200 guests for the reception, but they only allow 100 for a ceremony.

So I have known for a while that I need to find a ceremony location, but for the past month or so I have been putting it off. A few months ago my mom and I started looking at churches, but #1 they were more expensive than I had anticipated and #2 I had always imagined getting married outside.

This past week my mom decided to look at a few parks in the Newport Beach area since my fiancé and I live in Los Angeles and have a hard time getting down to Orange County during the week. A few of the parks did not have an ocean view, or were two far from the venue, but Peninsula Park actually seems like it could be a possibility.

Peninsula Park is a large grassy area right next to the beach, and only 0.5 miles from the reception location:

While the location is beautiful, we still need to think about how crowded it will be in the summer, all of the rental equipment we will have to bring in, sound system (website says no amplified sound), etc. I am going to call the Parks Department this week to check out the details, but I am hoping this works out!!