By Shanna, edited by Jennifer

Winter weddings in the Bay Area are challenging because winter here is not white fluffy snow but soggy wet rain.  Our hidden gems that are both elegant and dry would include the following:

• Testarossa Winery in Los Gatos: Testarossa has a cozy location for a smaller event, and is very unique in its design.  The long entryway corridor is a beautiful location to stage an indoor ceremony.  With its curved stonework walls reminiscent of a fairytale castle, you won't see anything like it anywhere else in the bay.
• Thomas Fogarty Winery: With sweeping views of the entire Bay Area and a covered ceremony/reception area, Thomas Fogarty Winery is ideal for winter weddings.  The rain coming through the Bay Area in the winter often leaves the air clear, allowing guests breathtaking vistas from San Francisco to Mt. Hamilton.  And on non-rainy winter days, the low clouds coming over from the ocean give the location and ethereal feel.
• Silver Creek in San Jose: Silver Creek boasts beautiful views of the green hillsides, which in California in the winter time are especially vibrant, as well as perfectly manicured lawns and breathtaking landscaping.  The ballroom allows views of the outdoors from all angles for a indoor event that can still connect to the beauties of the outdoors.  The interior of the facility is grandiose and elegant, including a sweeping double staircase.
• Coyote Creek Country Club in San Jose: Coyote Creek is perfect for the more casual reception or even the rehearsal dinner.  Although their ceremony sites are outdoors, the Country Club would be perfect for the winter bride who prefers a church ceremony and a reception with views.
• We and Our Neighborhood Clubhouse in San Jose: The Clubhouse is an intimate, casual, craftsman style venue -- and a San Jose historical landmark --  perfect indoor venue for a bride on a budget that wants the freedom to pick her own caterers and make the venue her own.

Photo credit: Image of Thomas Fogarty Winery by naotakem

Editor's disclosure: Shiny Orb, a shopping site for wedding apparel, receives no form of compensation from this vendor.

By Elizabeth

       

Click here to download:

flipping-through-wedding-photography-portfolios-is-a-snap-BwkxEpreFIIIbjdwrpdk.zip (1289 KB)

How did you come up with the idea for SnapKnot? 

I’m recently married and a casualty of the challenging wedding planning process (well, not really a casualty, but you know what I mean :) ). In particular my wife Eunice and I learned that finding a photographer was very difficult, stressful, and time-consuming. We were fortunate to end up with Jim Kennedy, a very talented and well-known photographer in Orange County. We consider ourselves lucky.

(Reid's co-founder) Mike was looking for his next career move and I was looking to get involved in something new as well, so after a series of brainstorming sessions we came up with the idea for SnapKnot, inspired in large part by my negative experience. We thought there was a better way for couples to find wedding photographers.

When did you launch SnapKnot?

SnapKnot was officially launched in the middle of February 2010, however we started building our social media network around the 1st of this year.  We will have 1,000 wedding photographers listed on SnapKnot within the next few weeks, and our overall traffic has been steadily growing since launch.

There are a some fantastic portfolios on SnapKnot.  Reid shared some of his favorites with us (see above).

Photo credits: Douglas Levy, Scott McNamara, Kristen Weaver, Studio-EMP

Editor's disclosure: Shiny Orb, a search site for bridesmaids dresses, receives no form of compensation from this vendor.

by Amy

Amy got married in late 2009 and was a runner up in Dancing with the Brides. She offers these tips on choosing wedding vendors and getting registered.

Editor's disclosure: Shiny Orb is an Amazon Associate.

Wedding vendors:

When you first get engaged, you are beyond excited and giddy. But once that excitement comes down a notch, you are instantly overwhelmed with the number of things that must get done before the big day. Without a wedding planner, one of the toughest things in the planning process is picking your vendors because good vendors can make your day absolutely wonderful while bad vendors can ruin a wedding. Sometimes, you may hear about vendors by word of mouth from trusted friends or family members. That makes things easy. But if you don't have that option, you can always use the internet to help you make your decisions.

For us, we were getting married on Long Island and as it turns out, there's a fantastic wedding board out there called LIWeddings.com where brides can give other brides advice and recommendations. We used this site heavily to get an initial list of vendors to visit and consider. Then we visited and talked to those selected vendors and made our decisions that way. Another site that is helpful is WeddingBee - there you'll also find reviews and advice from other brides.

Wedding registries:
 
Wedding registries are a really fun part of the wedding process. This is the time for you and your fiance(e) to start imagining what your new home will be like and what you'd like to have in it. We started with one registry at Bed Bath and Beyond because we were mostly looking for kitchen items and BBB had fairly reasonable prices and a very wide assortment of options for each item. They also have a great return policy in case a certain item ended up not fitting into our new home. The key to putting together a good registry is to add items with a wide range of prices and to add a lot of items. That way, your guests can have more options. For us, we thought we had added a ton of things but in the end, as the registry started getting filled, we realized that our friends and families wanted us to put more items on it. We started to go beyond the typical kitchen items to other items that we would like and ended up signing up for a registry with Amazon.com. They often have free shipping for items over $25, which is an added bonus for our guests.

Editor's note: It is also common practice for many stores to offer you a 10% discount on items that remain unpurchased from wedding registry.  So, don't be shy in adding more items!