Black Tuesday

One of my bridesmaids told me this and I never forgot it: "Better to be hours earlier than a minute too late." This was the approach we took when it came time to secure our site.

See, even though we loved our site and it was available for our date, we couldn't reserve it right there on the spot. It turns out that the city has a policy of opening up reservations on the first of every month for the corresponding month of the following year. Reservations are made starting the first of the month at 9am inside town hall. So we had to wait nearly a month before we could put down a deposit. It was a long, long month.

So on Aug 31, we packed up the truck with camping chairs, sleeping pads, blankets, and food and headed out east. Luckily, my friend from HS was in town so we ended up meeting up for dinner in Cerritos first. It was actually the most central location- HS friend was coming from SGV, we came from the south bay, and his cousin (who was my next door neighbor when we were little girls) and her bf came from OC, so it totally worked out for us! We had a really yummy meal, full of laughs and random stories. We ended up hanging out until 10 or so then said our goodbyes. We decided to brush our teeth in the restroom (ghetto I know, but totally works!) and then we headed out.

Yay we were the first ones there! Duh, of course. Who the heck else is crazy enough to show up that early? The weather was PERFECT. Jer wore shorts and a tshirt the whole night, no blankets for him needed.

We're crazy. It's like the Black Friday of wedding venues.

Our tummies full of Korean food and free ice cream (the BCD in Cerritos has 3 different kinds of self serve ice cream, all freeeeeeeee) and we are ready to...wait.

And wait.

Okay, so about half hour after we showed up, a mother of the bride came by. She was pretty much surprised to see us there, so she ended up having her daughter and fiance come earlier than they had planned. Even though they ended up not wanting our date (they wanted 9/11 for some reason), we really had no way of knowing. So we figured it was better peace of mind to just go as early as possible rather than stress out unnecessarily. Also, we showed up knowing exactly what date we wanted, it wasn't like we could be the 4th couple to show up and still get whatever wknd was left in Sept 2010. For Sept 2010 in particular, the venue is closed Labor Day wknd, 9/11 is a Saturday, so that left us with 9/18 and 9/25. Well the photographer we had originally picked was already booked on 9/25, so that left us 9/18. So not many options on our end, hence the overplanning.

I'm glad that couple showed up (although they seriously didn't need to. 9/11? They could show up...months later...and it would still be available) b/c it made the night go by a little easier. We all took turns hunting down restrooms and finding food. They even brought us some soda and we had fun talking to them as well. Jerry and I alternated cat napping 2 hours at a time. So it wasn't as miserable of a night as it could have been. We found out that at 3am, nothing was open except for a donut shop. Not even a gas station or a fast food joint. So we bought some donuts in exchange for using the restroom. Win-win. Oh, and a police officer showed up too. He thought we were homeless, lol. We told him what was going on and then he proceeded to give us anti-wedding advice since he was divorced himself haha. Anyways, all these distractions really passed the time. And before we knew it- 8am came! By then, more ppl had come and all the Saturdays were taken.

At 8am they open the doors to let you sit inside but you still have to wait until 9am.

And at 9am we got our site!

While our paperwork was being processed this girl just breezed in and tried to turn in her paperwork for our date (or the wk after ours, I don't remember). You all should have seen the look on her face when the clerk told her that all Saturdays were taken. She then said...oh can you take my paperwork anyway in case someone cancels? We all looked at her and was like...we've been here for over 10 hours and we're putting down our $500 deposit. Don't get your hopes up. Haha, sucker.

Okay, so an hour or so after that I went back to work. Barely functioning. But whatever, I was so happy we secured our site! Okay, if you're planning a wedding keep in mind that this story will most likely not happen to you and that you will not have to do crazy things just to reserve your site. Unless you choose to get married at Clarke Estate. Then I'll give you the address of the donut place where you can go pee at 3am.