Venue booked, check!

We have a venue now, yay! We're actually moving forward with this whole thing, which is refreshing.



We booked the Fanger Estates on the North Shore of Oahu. It's only by sheer luck that I found it. After someone posted about it on the Hawaii board on theknot forums, I had to check it out. It's in the final stages of construction, so we got one heck of a deal. I hope that most of our wedding party will stay with us in the estate; we booked the larger one with 6 bedrooms so we'll have ample room. Aside from being somewhat secluded and having a private beach, the whole deposit is refundable, a huge bonus in the unstable economic environment. This way, if things really start to go south in the next 12 months or so, we can cancel and go with plan B (still not sure what that is yet...). I think this is the only way that I got my other half to agree to booking something this early.



I think the plan will be to have most, if not all, of the wedding related activities happen at the estate. Welcome/Rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, possibly a morning after brunch. There is a private chef that can be hired; if there's money available I'd like to have someone cook us a nice brunch. For the other events, we'll have a caterer come and take care of things. We should be able to take care of the alcohol ourselves also; we can hire a bartender or two and pick up cases at Costco.



The whole area looks like it will be a blank slate for us. I like this, because I'm a bit of a picky control freak about decorating. I won't have to try and work around any preexisting items. I'd love to be able to make a scouting trip in the fall to see what it really looks like. We'll have to see how the finances pan out over the summer before committing to that.