Rehearsal dinner bust

Over the weekend, we visited our venue's newly open-to-the-public restaurant to rehearse it as a rehearsal dinner location (like that one?). The consensus: it was a major bust. It occurs to me now that I should have taken pictures of the food—whoops-a-daisy—but the only thing that was really worth looking at were the (kobe beef!) corn dog appetizers. They were delish.

The biggest problem with the space was that it was entirely outdoors. It was cool on an October afternoon up in the Santa Monica Mountains, so a March evening might be too uncomfortable to spend an entire dinner. The strictly mediocre food was just another nail in the coffin.

Honestly, I'm not all that disappointed. It would have been convenient to feed our guests where they already were, but we all have to head back to the same freeway to go home, and there are many, many restaurants within a few freeway exits. I had wanted something casual and relaxed, and now we have all of Los Angeles open to us! I have two venues in mind, specifically: a brewhouse with excellent pizza (can you get more casual and relaxed than pizza and beer?) and a mid-priced Persian restaurant in the Valley (my dad's suggestion—and I do love me some Valley-ethnic cuisine). We'll try them both in the next few weeks, and I will faithfully report back to you—with pictures this time!

It seems that we're doing more work to find our rehearsal dinner venue than we did to find the wedding venue! Are we the only ones having this much trouble?