So you want to get married in Napa? Then you’ve come to the right place!
Since our wedding day this past May and since posting all of our photos on the blog this past month, my inbox had been flooding with Brides-to-Be wanting to get married in Napa.
You guys have a million questions and are looking for complete and total honesty from my personal experience.
As I started to email everyone back, I began to get a little overwhelmed and decided that dedicating a whole blog post would be my best bet.
So here it goes…
Everything You Need To Know About Getting Married in Napa
I want to start off by saying that I wholeheartedly love the Valley and I do not regret our decision one bit. Our wedding in Napa was beautiful and everything I could have ever imagined. It was the most magical and fun weekend for all of our guests and it was exactly what I pictured. This sweet little town, that’s famous worldwide for its wine, became my second home at one point. The charm, the weather, the people, the wine. It’s an incredible place. With that being said, I don’t want you to think that getting married there was all unicorns and roses. I mean, no wedding planning is (!!), but there were just a lot of things that I didn’t factor in when choosing Napa as our wedding destination, that I wish I would have.
How & Why We Choose Napa For Our Wedding
My entire life, I always wanted a destination wedding. I pictured my wedding small, intimate, loving and fun. I never pictured a ballroom filled with 300+ guests. We just wanted our closest friends and family there with us and didn’t want to spend the whole evening going from table to table, thanking people we barely knew.
Since we got engaged in Italy, we decided we wanted to try and kind of keep the same theme going. We wanted an al fresco style, Tuscan themed wedding with beautiful views and lots of wine. We had already planned a vacation to Napa a few months after getting engaged, so we went there to celebrate our engagement and low-key look at venues. Colton’s parents had gone a month before us and raved about how we had to get married there and after we visited, we couldn’t agree more! The weather, the ambiance, how relaxed we were, everything just felt right.
So we went home, spoke to my Dad, narrowed down a few venues and then went back up with him in October to make the final decision.
Pros of Getting Married in Napa
It’s absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. It’s classy but also very relaxed, everyone there is so kind and of course, the wine is everything you could expect. The weather is also pretty much always perfect. Which is key if you want an outdoor wedding! Warm (but not too warm) during the day and cool at night.
It’s the perfect location if you want a destination wedding but you’re not wanting to get married at the beach and it is only about an hour maybe an hour and a half outside of San Francisco or Oakland, of which both airlines are super easy to fly into and fairly well priced!
Choosing a Venue
If you’re getting married in Napa, I highly recommend taking a trip to visit venues before making your final decision! A lot of places look different in person and every venue wants a lot of money upfront, so you want to see them in person before making a final decision.
The venues we looked were – The Estate in Yountville, Meadowood Napa Valley, V. Sattui Winery, Charles Krug Winery, Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch, Black Swan Lake and Beaulieu Garden’s.
Picking a venue was really hard because not one venue was “perfect”. They were all expensive and yet there was something wrong or had some weird rule at every single venue. In the end, though, we ended up choosing Beaulieu Garden’s because deep down, it was always my favorite. The venue literally took my breath away and if our guests were going to travel all the way to Napa just to see Colton and I say “I Do” then I wanted them to be wowed too.
About Beaulieu Garden
Beaulieu Garden is located in Rutherford. It used to be a working vineyard, but it’s now just an estate that also allows events. The property is gorgeously ginormous. The driveway lined with trees will make your heart stop. The ceremony is held in a rose garden and the reception is held under a twinkle-lit canopy covered in vines and the dancing is done under the stars. Like I said, it literally took my breath away.
But like I said, no venue is perfect.
A few things about Beaulieu that I had to get past was (1) The Curfew. No matter what, everyone had to be out of there by 10:00 p.m. Which was fine, because we had the wedding start at 4:00, so it was still a six-hour event and we all went to a bar to continue celebrating afterward, but still….I wish we could have at least gone until 11:00. (2) The Wedding Aisle. It’s not straight. I always imagined walking down a long straight aisle at my wedding but you can’t do that here because of the fountain. (3) You can’t get ready at the house on the property. We had to get ready at our hotel and then only I could get dressed on site. (4) You have to bring in more restrooms since there is one bathroom on site. (5) The Estate is Someone’s Home. Beaulieu has been passed down by generations and is now in the hands of the original owner’s kids or grandkids. They sometimes live on the property (but most of the time don’t) yet they still literally have the craziest rules. It was like one thing after another with them and was just a huge hassle. (6) The “Back Up” Rain Plan. If it just so happens to even potentially rain on the day of your wedding, you are required to tent the ENTIRE PROPERTY. I won’t even tell you the cost, but it still makes me sick to even think about. The possibility of it raining and us having to pay for that left a pit in my stomach until literally until the day of the wedding.
If you can get past all of that though, like we did, then you will love Beaulieu as your venue choice!
I hope all of that didn’t scare you away (because it’s magical), but these are all things that I wish I would have been told!
Choosing a Wedding Planner
If you are truly planning on getting married in Napa, then I 100% recommend having a planner. Most likely, you haven’t planned a wedding before, so that’s new in itself. Now you’re planning on getting married in a location that you really aren’t that familiar with. So you want someone who knows the area, knows the Napa wedding industry like the back of their hand and is familiar with all of the rules and regulations of the county because let me tell you, there’s a lot of them. My wedding planner was Kathy Higgins and I personally like to refer to her more as my angel.
I literally could not have planned our wedding without her. She was so helpful and so amazing. I rave about her for years.
How We Chose Our Planner
Basically, our planner, Kathy got back to me first after reaching out to about five different planners. I was in the process of having a little bit of a panic attack while trying to choose a venue and started reaching out to all of the planners I had been recommended to use. Kathy was the first one to respond (some took weeks to get back to me) and in the middle of my panic attack, she calmed all of my nerves, answered all of my questions and at that moment I immediately knew there was no one else I was going to choose.
Other Things To Consider
It’s expensive.
Like really expensive. From the hotels to the venues, to literally everything else. Tell yourself a budget and then double that. The reason it’s like this is because they have a captive audience. Meaning, if you were getting married in Houston, you would have 30 vendors and hotels to choose from whereas in Napa, you have like two. So basically, everyone in Napa can do and charge whatever it is they want too.
The Hotels
As I mentioned above, hotels in Napa are expensive. The starting price for decent hotels in popular areas like St. Helena and Yountville is around $500.
I suggest either looking into AirBnb’s or going a little north to Calistoga for your stay. It’s the cutest little town and has more of a variety when it comes to hotels at all different price points.
Picking The Right Season
Picking the right season is key. I suggest choosing a date anywhere from late April to October. A warning about September-October though……they are harvest season. Which means the area is very busy, the hotels are double the price and there will be a million other weddings going on.
We originally chose October as our wedding date and quickly learned that it was a mistake.
If you are thinking about getting married in Napa, then hope I answered everyone’s questions, if I forgot something, please leave it below!
xo,
Lauren