Venue

Nick and I talked a lot about the kind of venue we want for the wedding.  We looked into many places, and they all just seemed to be missing some major component... we wanted something unique while still accommodating our traditional wedding needs.  We wanted something unique to Tucson, something you wouldn't find anywhere else in the country.

One of the countless days we went looking around, we found the place pretty randomly.  I vaguely remembered someone mentioning a place that had a similar name, and I looked it up on my phone while we were driving around.  That place didn't come up, but Wild Horse Ranch did.

We drove out there and found it after looking around for a bit.  It was sunset when we pulled up and no one was around, but the place is pretty open... we were able to just walk around the grounds and look into the windows of the building.  A wedding had taken place the day before it looked like, so some wedding favors were lying around.  We immediately fell in love with the place, and I took home a little party favor someone had left on a table--i little plastic wedding cake filled with bubbles, and the cake topper pulled off to become a wand.  Topher Cats loved it.  We had a lot of fun playing with him with the bubbles.

The place is really old and beautiful.  It has a lot of historical area to it, but other areas are renovated and nice for things like the ceremony.  There is an extremely old bar/saloon for the cocktail hour, which we both thought was pretty awesome.  The dance area is nice with hardwood floors and lighting, and some beautiful wood beams.

The ceremony area is really nice.  We want to have an outdoor ceremony at sunset, and this area is perfect.  I generally don't like grass anywhere in Arizona, but this area does it really well.  It doesn't look tacky or too fake.  There's a nice little water path running around the ceremony area as well, breaking up the space and making it a little less formal.

We decided on the place pretty instantly and haven't had any second thoughts.