Paper & Space: entertain: our wedding, the location

I've posted a few pictures from our wedding here, but I realized I've never really talked about it! So much went into planning our wedding, and it was all done from the other side of the country. You might be wondering why we decided to get married in New Mexico. We realized, right away, that no matter where we held the event, a majority of the guests would be traveling. Mike is from Virginia, I'm from Alabama, we lived in New York... there just wasn't a place that made sense. I thought about having the wedding in New York, but even planning a small wedding it's really expensive in the city. So when Mike told me that he'd always imagined getting married out on his family's ranch, and we knew everyone was going to have to travel anyway, a rustic ranch wedding sounded like the perfect solution.

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It is a stunningly beautiful place, and his family has been on that land for seven generations. The Pino Ranch is just outside of a tiny town called Carrizozo.

The town is in Lincoln County, which has two claims to fame, Smokey the Bear and Billy the Kid. This was the wild wild West. Billy and his crew "allegedly" used to cross the Pino Ranch going back and forth between Carrizozo and the gold mining boom town of White Oaks. The sheriff of Lincoln County shot and killed Billy the Kid for his involvement in the Lincoln County War.

Cool stuff, huh?!? I love history, it was my favorite subject in school, and Mike and I almost exclusively read non fiction or biographies. So "thanks to great leaders, such as Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Socratic method . . . the world is FULL of history." *Extra bonus points if anybody knows what movie that quote is from!*

OK, back to the wedding planning. So I was on board right away with a Ranch wedding. But I did have some concerns. Some were design related, but most were actual logistics... like where does one get flowers, a cake, food and lodging for a hundred people in a town that doesn't even have a grocery store??? This is the main street... so, as you can see, there's not too much going on here.

We knew right away that finding enough room people for people to stay was going to be a deal breaker. Unfortunately the available accommodations were... umm... not so deluxe... but what can ya do?

We went around to all three of the local motels and reserved every room in the town, and a couple of B&B's in the surrounding area. Once we'd booked the entire town, we went back to NYC and started planning the rest of the event.

Now let's talk scheduling and why I had over a year long engagement. Mike proposed to me in May of 2010. It was really great, he took me out to the Eastern most tip of Long Island, and popped the question by the lighthouse in Montauk.

He was really sweet and of course I said yes! Oh have I mentioned before, that I'm kind of a dork???

We go out to New Mexico every year for a Fourth of July family reunion. So we knew the Where; on the Ranch. With lodging confirmed we knew the When; the next family reunion July 4th weekend. Now finally we could start planning all the fun wedding stuff!

Pinterest is an awesome tool for wedding planning, I got tons of inspiration and ideas... and so the decor and feel of this wedding started to materialize. I'd always imagined, before I met Mike, that my wedding would be a Southern affair. And I probably would hold it at Oakton. A beautiful antebellum mansion that has been in my family for many generations.

Many of my relatives have had their weddings here, my mom and dad, cousins, aunt and uncles, and most recently my youngest sister. It's a beautiful place with tons of history and it just oozes Southern charm. I was just going to pick my dress add some hydrangeas, serve up some sweet tea and call it a day! But now that I was getting married out West- I had to rethink everything. My husband's family has a strong Spanish heritage, they call it Pino Pride. And since I was going to become a Pino, I wanted to reflect his culture as much as mine.

So here are some of the pictures that really inspired me to plan our Southern, causal, Ranch wedding fiesta, and it was all about love being a BIG deal...