Venue Scouting in Napa & Sonoma Wine Country: How to find the perfect wedding venue

Are you recently engaged and looking to get married in the highly desirable Wine Country? Whether you are local or looking for a destination wedding, we are here to help you find a perfect fit for your wedding venue. With over 60,000 acres of vineyards and more than 600 wineries in Napa and Sonoma Counties collectively, there are an immense and diverse range of options to choose from when visiting these popular tourist destinations.

Over the years, Napa and Sonoma have rapidly become two of the top desirable locations in the world for destination weddings due to its rustic charm, upscale wineries, vineyards, restaurants and its vast scenic beauty. With so many options in these two areas for wedding venues, it can be an overwhelming and tedious feat to try to pick and choose where to host your big day. This is where we come in.

We have recently created a special package for this exact reason. With the majority of our team being from the Napa and Sonoma regions, we are highly knowledgable of all that these destinations have to offer, from wineries and vineyards, to hotels and restaurants and beyond. Combined, we take pride in our ability to create an efficient and productive day of venue scouting that will give you a great kickstart to your wedding planning. We believe that the entire wedding planning experience should be fun, inspiring and enjoyable for the couple, and we want to help create this easygoing and memorable experience for our clients.

How It Works: 

We come on board to get to know your visions, dreams and ideas for your wedding and focus those into one cohesive list of qualified venues to suit your style and price point. We put together a lovely day of venue tours, lunch on us, and wine tastings. This is an excellent opportunity for us to get to know you as the couple better and discuss logistics of the venues, paint a picture of how the wedding day/weekend would look and how the style and design could be produced in each space. We really want to make this fun, exciting and inspiring for you, so we follow up with a detailed spreadsheet with information about each venue we visited (inclusions, requirements, suggestions, etc.) so that you can not only make a confident and positive decision, but also not have to worry about retaining all of the information during the day. This will allow you to focus on seeing and visualizing the space without having to take notes or worry about remembering the many logistical details that will be discussed.  

Hopefully, by the end of our day together, we have established trust and a great relationship and you are interested in bringing us on board to be apart of their wedding planning dream team. We know how overwhelming this aspect of planning your wedding can be, and our goal is to provide our clients with valuable information and affordable assistance that will help you moving forward and ease any stress or worry that you may have around planning. While we are focused in Sonoma and Napa, we are always excited to see new venues and locations and the challenge of designing a new space, regionally, domestically or internationally. The sky is the limit, and we look forward to any chance to help you make your dream wedding a reality.

Learn more about our Venue Scouting Package

Brooke + Robert

Brooke and Robert are a couple that embodies the unique culture of North Cal. The love birds, who met from a chance encounter at a convenience store in SF, desired a wedding that was “casual, but stylish” with a twist on some of the traditional aspects. Their sweet ceremony took place at the very quaint General Vallejo’s Home, a historical house located just a short walk from Sonoma's town square.  After the “I Dos”, the wedding party and guests marched down the street playing instruments as they followed behind the band. They were creating a symphony to announce the joyous harmony of Brooke and Robert’s union. The parade would end at El Dorado Kitchen, where the party would begin. The restaurant itself has a very rustic, yet chic atmosphere. To compliment the organic ambiance, each guest had their own personalized stamped wood coins at their seat; these will make memorable ornaments on their Christmas tree this year. We also enlisted the help of the talented Lidia of La Flueriste to design natural tablescapes of flowers, herbs, and vegetables. The Newly Weds wanted to approach their reception like a “big party” that “not only celebrates the fact that we are getting married, but also a celebration of all the people we love”. With half of their guests from Germany, they wanted to blend the family traditions and help with ice breakers at the dining tables. Each guest was given “fact” cards to match up with other guests at their table. It was really fun to watch everyone bond over dinner. Rather than a traditional guest book, Brooke and Robert decided to have 6 wine bottles labeled for each of their first 6 anniversaries of marriage. Guests were asked to impart words of wisdom or written love notes for the couple to read on each bottles respective anniversary. By the end of the night, it wasn’t hard to see why this couple had fallen in love. Through the laughter, blessed tears, and gleeful merging of families, it was apparent these two would be together for many years longer than their guest book elixir would last them.

062213_Brook_Robert_1112-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0295-625x415.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY-625x446.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0394-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0541-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0823-625x415.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY1-625x446.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0448
062213_Brook_Robert_0448
062213_Brook_Robert_1010_J-625x413.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0965-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_1251_J-625x417.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_1434-625x415.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY4-625x446.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY3-625x446.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_1886-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_1964-625x415.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY2-625x446.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY5-625x446.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_2345-625x415.jpg
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY6-625x446.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_2212-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_2474_J
062213_Brook_Robert_2474_J
Brook_Robert_FOR-LINDSAY7-625x446.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_1061-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_3157-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_3155-625x415.jpg
062213_Brook_Robert_0939-625x415.jpg

Planner: l’Relyea Events 
Ceremony Venue: General Vallejo’s Home
Ceremony Officiant: Lili Goodman Freitas
Reception Venue: El Dorado Kitchen & Hotel 
Reception Music:  Premier productions
Photographer: Rebecca Gosselin  
Florist: Lidia of La Fleuriste
Transportation: Sebastiani Trolly, Vinatge Cab: William Valley  
Hair & Makeup: Salon Novo - Hair: Andrea  & Makeup: Alan 
Rentals: Big 4 Rents