Hi - this is Marineh, co-founder of Harsanik.com, with another update on my wedding planning process...

Before we started getting into the details of the wedding planning, my mom asked me what we wanted to do with our engagement party. I was a little surprised because I hadn't really thought much about the engagement party! While we already had the venue picked for our wedding, we had no idea where and how we wanted to celebrate our engagement party.

Both Shant and I agreed that we wanted to keep the engagement party intimate and have just our closest family & friends. The purpose of the engagement party would be to allow the two families to get to know each other and celebrate before the wedding.

Shant and I decided we wanted a day time event - so more of a lunch gathering than a nighttime event. Our goal was to have our engagement be different than the wedding. So we started looking at possible venue options. At first, we thought about having the engagement party in San Diego since it would allow our families to get to see where we lived. However, after thinking about it a bit more, we didn't think it would be fair to have all of our guests drive 2 hours to our event, so we crossed out the idea. We looked into a few halls and restaurants but hadn't quite agreed on a place.

And then Christine from Fancy That! Events suggested we look into the Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica. We checked out their website and a few pictures Christine sent me and we were both very impressed. The location was perfect. The hotel is located right on the water. The hotel itself is gorgeous and the ballroom is very picturesque. Overall, we felt that it's a classy location to set the stage for a classy event. Plus, one of the major highlights of Casa Del Mar is that their ballroom has an outdoor patio and a view of the ocean. So we felt that it was the ideal location for a daytime event because our guest could have a view of Santa Monica Beach. And it's something different since we knew most of our guests had never even been to Casa Del Mar so it would be a nice place for them to see.

I contacted the Director of Catering Sales at Casa Del Mar and she was extremely helpful with providing all the information I needed and answering all my questions. So after just a few days, Shant and I were convinced that Casa Del Mar was going to be the right choice for our engagement celebration!

Planning Status:

• Wedding Venue -  Taglyan Cultural Complex
• Caterer - Divine Food & Catering
• Engagement Venue - Hotel Casa Del Mar

Next Up: Picking out my wedding dress...

Hi - this is Marineh and I am one of the co-founders of Harsanik.com! I am excited to announce that I am engaged and I'm in the middle of planning my own "harsanik"! I have decided to blog all about my wedding planning adventures to help other brides with the planning process and provide some fun content for our website visitors. My new blog series is called "A Bride's Story" and you can read all about my wedding planning experience in the Marineh's Story section.

If you're a bride and you'd like to share your wedding planning experience with our users, contact us!

Hey there - it's Marineh from Harsanik.com. As you can see, I'm trying to blog more often so I can finally catch up!

Once we picked our venue, Shant and I got into full wedding planning mode and started working on everything from guest list, budgets, and vendor selection.

The guest list is definitely the hardest part. We originally thought we were going to have a 300 person wedding to keep it “small” (of course only an Armenian would consider 300 people a small wedding!). However, after we started adding all the names of our family members and our friends, we were already looking at going over that mark. We agreed we were going to try to stick to 350 to accommodate our long list of families and friends.

As for budget, we listed all the categories of vendors we would need (photographer, bridal shops, invitations, etc) and estimated how much we would be willing to spend for each category. While we knew this was a rough estimate, it was helpful to have a rough idea of what our total wedding budget was going to look like. Also, it allowed us to mark which categories we would be willing to spend more on because they were very important to both of us, and which categories we would be willing to try to minimize our cost.

  Tip: Shant and I created a Google Docs account and have been storing all of our wedding related documents there. Google Docs is a great tool that allows you to keep track of everything from wedding lists, budgets, list of names & addresses, menu selections, and everything else online and all in one place!

Planning Status:

• Banquet Hall -  Taglyan Cultural Complex
• Caterer - Divine Food & Catering
• Guest List - In Progress...

Next Up: Picking my engagement party location...

This is Marineh, co-founder of Harsanik.com with another update on my wedding planning adventures!

On Saturday December 26th, Shant and I drove to the Taglyan Cultural Complex to meet with their venue and bookings manager, Aram, and finally see the banquet hall for the first time. Both Shant and I had a good feeling about the hall since we loved all the pictures we had seen of Taglyan, we really liked the location (close for both families), and it would mean we would get to work closer with Christine from Fancy That! Events since she is the Marketing Director at Taglyan!

When we got to Taglyan, we parked our car and walked outside through the pretty gardens before walking into the hall. We were already in a great mood since we both loved the garden area and we knew it would be perfect to have our cocktail hour outside since we were planning on having a summer wedding. I could just imagine all my guests mingling there after the valet takes their car. Maybe we can even have a bar in the garden serving our signature drink?

When we walked in, we were immediately greeted by Aram. Aram was extremely nice and he showed us around. First, we saw the foyer area which was very elegant and well designed. Aram also showed us the garden and explained that all the outdoor lighting could be customized to match your wedding colors. They also had speakers in the garden area in case you wanted to play the music outside as well. At that point, Shant & I decided our cocktail hour would be both indoors & outdoors (garden & foyer).

Next, Aram showed us the gorgeous banquet hall. I had seen many beautiful photos of the inside of Taglyan, but seeing it in person was even more beautiful. Aram gave us a preview of what the lights could look like and explained that we could decide what color to display at what time – eg. blue for the main entrance, pink for the first dance, etc. Aram also explained that all the speakers were built into the ceiling so there would be no need to have large speakers on the stage. We both loved that aspect because we know nobody likes to sit at the table that’s closest to the loud speakers! Overall Shant was very impressed by how technologically advanced Taglyan was since everything seemed to be controlled electronically and appeared ready to go. Shant has an engineering background so of course he was most impressed by the electronics while I was wowed by the beautiful ceiling lights!

The last few stops of the tour were the bathrooms and the private bridal room. The bathrooms were not only impeccably clean, but also very nicely designed. We also liked how we would be given our private bridal room that we could share with our bridal party and have a place to lock all of our things.

At the end of the tour, we said bye to Aram, and Christine from Fancy That! called me and walked us through more details. She clarified that the hall fee includes the room rental, the garden, all catering by Divine & Food Catering, which is their exclusive in-house catering department (I’ve heard great things about their food), all tables, chairs, and linens. We really liked that pretty much everything was included, and Taglyan felt like a complete solution. This was a better option for us versus renting a hall but then needing to worry about every little detail from draping to tables to silverware.

After a few more details from Christine, Shant and I were sold and we agreed to sign a contract and give our deposit to lock in Taglyan for our August wedding!

Note: I know I’m really behind with my blog – I have over 2 months of wedding planning to catch up on! As you can tell, wedding planning is a lot of work and it’s keeping me super busy! But I promise I’ll get caught up over the next few weeks so look out for more regular updates…

Planning Status:

• Banquet Hall -  Taglyan Cultural Complex
• Caterer - Divine Food & Catering
• So much more left to do…

Next Up: Start working on the guest list...