Location, location, location.

After the engagement was on, it was time to figure out where and when we were actually going to do this whole wedding thing. As for where, there were three obvious choices. 1) Chicago (my hometown), 2) Los Angeles (where we live) and 3) Everywhere else in the world!

Option 1: Sweet Home Chicago

source

Option 2: The City of Angels

source

Option 3: Everywhere!

source

Thankfully we were able to narrow down that 3rd category pretty easily. We decided early on that we didn’t want a full-on destination wedding. I wanted to be able to plan hands on and we didn’t want to ask all of our guests to travel too far… but we still liked the idea of everyone being on vacation and in one place—so the idea of “semi destination” came into play. To us, semi destination is anywhere that’s out of town, but still close enough to plan with some ease. Santa Barbara and Palm Springs quickly came to mind. Both cities are only about 2 hours away, so we’d easily be able to make numerous planning trips. Santa Barbara was an obvious choice since it’s where we met and fell in love… and hey, the fact that it’s crazy gorgeous didn’t slide by us either. I had always been interested in Palm Springs and I had recently seen some amazing Palm Springs weddings in the blogosphere.

source

source

source

See. Awesome-ness.

So, the fiancé and I talked about it. As much as we love, love, love Santa Barbara, we’d had already been to a few (amazing) SB weddings and my midwestern family had already traveled to SB and we kind of wanted something new. And that’s how our list became: 1) Chicago 2) LA 3) Palm Springs.

Stay tuned to see what we picked!