With a more specific location in mind, I searched through many websites looking for venue ideas around Tahoe. They range from State Parks, to beach front locations, to woodsy retreats to mountain top vistas and even to chartered yachts or ski-access only locales. I narrowed down my choices based on price range, and what pictures and reviews I could find. The Knot was again helpful for a lot of this, though it seemed that they only have a snapshot of the vendors available in any given area. I found more places through local Tahoe wedding related sites - www.tahoeweddings.com, www.beautifultahoeweddings.com and so on.
I finally picked a place to look at. I was so excited! It felt like it took forever to me - remember, I'd been looking at this stuff for a couple of months by this point. In reality, a short 11 days after getting engaged, Marc and I were on the road to our first venue visit.
Let me introduce you to:
Cal Neva Resort! 
This place is famous for being on the California-Nevada state line. The state line even passes through the swimming pool!
It was also, famously, owned by one Frank Sinatra for a few years in the 1960s. He hung out there with his friends - Dean Martin, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and others. There were also parts of "The Godfather" filmed here.
What a fun history! And how perfect for a vintage feeling wedding.
Below is a picture of the (reportedly famous) Indian Room, the room where they have the largest weddings. The fireplace sits squarely on the state line, and as the Wedding Manager told us: the BMs sit in California, the groomsmen in Nevada. The bar is in NV, and the dancing in CA.
The outdoor ceremony site was also perfectly lovely:
And, seriously, could you find a better view?
In addition to the fun history, the vintage appropriate atmosphere and the beautiful view, there were two other huge pluses: the Wedding Manager, Sharon was so very quirky in just the way that I love, and the price was FANtastic for the Tahoe area. Plus they had lots of dates available!
Unfortunately, the only draw back was a negative so large that it overshadowed all of the good things. See, this is a resort and casino. And the casino part was fully in Nevada. Where they still allow smoking. And have since it was built in 1926 and rebuilt in 1937. And even on a Monday afternoon, with a closed casino, the place reeked of cigarette smoke.
I almost was able to overcome the smell, but the thought of people's first impression of our wedding being "yuck! cigarettes!" just didn't jive with us.
Incidentally, it may be a good thing that we didn't choose CalNeva - I just saw this article! The casino is closing "temporarily" due to financial issues. Doesn't sound good...
I had no idea how long visiting a site would take, so I had only scheduled one visit for the day. And that was after HOURS of exhaustive research.
On the drive up there, Marc found two more places to go visit. While he was driving.
Frustrating. But research is my forte, and Marc knows Tahoe better than I do, so... I guess that was bound to happen!
We didn't take any pictures of the second place we visited. It was about 10 minutes from CalNeva, so we just stopped in to the North Tahoe Event Center
Here is a pic of the ceremony site:
Yes, it is right on the beach. Pretty dang amazing.
Other positives:
- Very nice (though not very quirky) contact person
- Price not too bad
- You can bring in your own alcohol - generally a HUGE cost
Negatives:
- The room available to host a wedding our size looked kind of like this (but bigger, without the chairs):
No windows. Just a big, boxy room with a projector screen at the front. With the amazing, beautiful lake less than 50 yards away.
Apparently large groups will have the eating in there, then move to the smaller, lake front room for dancing and cake. But by that point the sun would be down!
Anyway. Overall, I was impressed with our first two visits, though neither was ideal. We had one more visit that day, but it deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned!
1 comment:
This looks like the perfect place for lake tahoe weddings. It's so pretty up there. I drive hours to get up there at least twice every year.
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