Venture Retreat Center

my mood board pictures all hewed in the if we were getting married in the Lord of the Rings' elves' forest direction). Being able to stay on site and have some of our guests (mostly those in our wedding party) stay on site was so relaxing, although sadly it was too cold (mid September) to use the pool! We had our rehearsal dinner there the night before (pizza from Verrazzano Pizza in Half Moon Bay), got ready there in the morning (I bought a large portable battery for the hair curlers, etc, and my bridesmaids and mom and I got our hair and makeup done on the deck behind the honeymoon tent which was so perfect and relaxing, while the guys got ready in one of the giant tent/yurts on the other side of the property), and then of course had our ceremony and dinner and dancing there that evening. A few of our guests even described our wedding as magical afterwards which made me feel like I'd really achieved my goal, lol. This venue is definitely the kind where you need to be in a do it yourself mindset - I had originally wanted a more all-inclusive wedding venue so that there would be less for me to have to choose and I didn't have to plan every little detail, but of all the foresty locations I looked at, this one just had the right relaxing feels to me. It didn't feel over the top, it felt very customizable, and most importantly whenever I came to visit there I just felt relaxed and that's how I wanted to feel for the wedding weekend. To balance out the do it yourself-ness, I did end up hiring a wedding planner for the whole process instead of just day of coordination, and I think that helped with not being overwhelmed and having the day go off so well. (For reference wedding was 9/14/24) In addition to the feeling at the venue being so relaxing, a few other things that drew us to this venue: - Its a small, family owned business. I was really trying to make as many sustainable/ethical decisions as I could when planning the wedding, and figured, if I was going to be spending this much money, I wanted to support small businesses instead of the big corporate wedding institutions. Not being at a big corporate setup, you do trade some of the we've-done-this-hundreds-of-times-before knowledge and polish, but in it's place you get flexibility, customization, and the feeling like your wedding can be unique and not exactly the same as the hundreds that have come before (which I'm not looking down on, because there are so many decisions to make when planning a wedding, it can be really nice to have some of those taken away and at first that's what I wanted, but I don't regret ultimately going the other direction). - The decor and lawn games they offer and having guests staying on site, etc was all included in their fee. One thing that really annoyed me looking at other venues was feeling nickle-and-dimed. Like I'm paying you this huge amount of money, and you're going to ask for another $50 dollars so I can offer my guests cornhole during the happy hour? Really?? The fact that Venture didn't do that was a huge plus in their column for me, even just in the feels I had toward the place, if that makes sense. - They kept improving the place after we had booked - for example the deck where I got ready wasn’t there the first time we visited!