After shooting at hundreds upon hundreds of venues, we can confidently say that Calamigos Ranch is one of the most beautiful wedding venues we have ever worked in. Nearly every picture you take there comes out beautifully. Calamigos boasts four different “rooms” or wedding spaces: The Oaks Room, The Pavilions at North Point, The Redwood Room and The Birchwood Room. We have shot in all of these rooms and are happy to bring you insights that will help you to choose the room that fits your individual wedding best. Let’s start with the Oaks Room.
The Oaks Room Ceremony Space boasts a beautiful natural waterfall backdrop. It is located on a deck in front of the waterfall and framed by a large arbor made out of curly tree branches. The arbor really transforms with various flower arrangements, but also looks great just by itself.
The real pearl of this room is the reception space – the beautiful combination of glass and wood used in its construction gives the room a whimsical feel, while the fireplace and a patio in the back assure it’s coziness.
But before you choose this room for your wedding, here are a few things to consider:
- the ceremony space is quite tight and it’s hard for the photo/video team to move around, so the number of angles to shoot from during the ceremony is limited.
- If you are having video recorded during the ceremony, the waterfall in the back can seriously interfere with the audio and it may be best to have the waterfall turned off for the duration of the ceremony.
- the getting ready room is quite dark and although during some hours of the day the light there is nice, at other times it is not the best place for getting ready photos.
One more thing to be aware of with this room is the lighting. Because this space in Malibu is surrounded by nature or buildings from all sides, the sun goes down here a lot earlier than at sea level, so a sunset ceremony in this room is not a great idea as the light is nearly gone by then. If your ceremony happens later in the day, we very highly recommend doing a first look in this location to capture some wedding photos with beautiful daylight and we recommend having your ceremony way ahead of the golden hour. You can catch some beautiful sunset rays here and there, so some romantic photos after the ceremony are possible with this softer light, but it’s best to stay on the safe side and start everything in this room early. An added bonus to starting early here would be having natural light during some of your reception, which makes the reception room look absolutely magnificent.
What Each Room Best For at Calamigos Ranch?
Now that we have had a close look at what the Oaks Room has to offer, let’s see which rooms at Calamigos Ranch takes the cake in each category:
- Best ceremony space – Pavilions at North Point
- Best reception space – the Oaks Room
- Best shoot location variety – Pavilions at North Point
- Best aisle – the Redwood Room
- Best outdoor reception space – the Birchwood Room
Each room at Calamigos is very unique and different from each other, but whichever room you choose, you can’t go wrong as each is unique and beautiful in its own way. We get excited every time we get a new wedding at Calamigos Ranch!
