For those of you who have been following me on Twitter, you know by now that we’ve picked a date for our wedding and a venue as well!

Allan and I will be getting married in Tofino/Ucluelet on Saturday, September 3rd 2011. Wohooo! We feel that Tofino is the perfect place for us to start our new life together, and I am really excited for all our guests to experience our favourite place in the whole world.

We’ve put deposits down on our venues already! Our ceremony location will be at the Black Rock Resort.

Allan wants an outdoor wedding and I want an indoor wedding… so we thought — hey, let’s have the weather decide! Black Rock has a beautiful outdoor patio that looks out onto the wild Pacific Ocean with dramatic trees and rocks framing the landscape.

It can seat around 100 people, but since we are having only about 70-80 people, it will be the perfect size.

While we were standing there, it was amazing to hear the ocean crashing against the rocks and seeing the ocean spray shoot into the air in the background.

In the event of rain or wind, we will be going downstairs to the Wine Cellar Room at the Black Rock for the ceremony. The room can seat around 100 people for the ceremony.

The room is beautiful with candlelit alcoves and floor to ceiling windows.

The windows look through steep cliffs on either side out to the Pacific Ocean and the waves. We love it!

Our dinner reception will take place just down the driveway at the brand new Ucluelet Community Centre that just opened a few weeks ago!

It’s hard to imagine with this fair going on, but we’re going to transform the inside of this venue to look romantic with tent-like draperies, natural elements and of course, some simple wedding florals. The ceilings are ridiculously high with exposed wood beams and windows. It’s going to be beautiful! And best of all… it’s HUGE (can seat 250 people) so there will be lots of space for a rockin’ dance floor.

We’re really excited about our wedding venues and can’t wait to tie the knot on our favourite little spot on the West Coast, with lots of time for surfing afterwards

What do you think of destination weddings? What do you think of our venues?

Well, it’s back to reality after an amazing long weekend in Tofino to celebrate our three year anniversary! We stayed at Ocean Village Resort and arrived Friday night to some beautiful views.

Ocean Village Resort is a number of cabins with gorgeous beachfront views, basically right in Tofino on Middle Beach.

Our cabins worked perfectly for our surf weekend… cozy, a full kitchen, hot shower, great views, and close to the beach.

Not to mention that they don’t charge extra for long weekends unlike everywhere else in Tofino and they are quite reasonable.

Great location! They are doing some renovations for summer so I’m looking forward to seeing what they are going to be adding in or updating.

They also have an indoor salt water pool and hot tub which I thought was rad since I’m not a fan of chlorine.

Unfortunately I didn’t take many photos this weekend, especially not while surfing since we were just trying to enjoy ourselves so bear with me here.

On Saturday we spent some time exploring Ucluelet…

Then it was off to dinner at the Spotted Bear Bistro with our friends Liv and Rob. Wonderful company, good food.

Then we headed out to surf that night with Liv. Not too bad… small waves at Chesterman’s and a gorgeous sunset. Too bad we were super rusty after a winter away from the surf!

On Sunday we headed out with a number of friends to the Clayoquot Island Open House… on a boat!

This island is amazingly beautiful… maintained by two people, completely private, except for the open house that they host once a year. The gardens are stunning… they are fully self-sustainable with solar power, full vegetable and fruit gardens etc…

We had a lot of fun exploring with friends.

I loved that they grew their own mushrooms to eat!

So many beautiful plants and flowers.

Time to head home!

Then we had our special 3 year anniversary dinner at our favourite restaurant in Tofino, the Pointe Restaurant at the Wickaninnish Inn.

We ate way too much food…

I had the scallops and dungeness crab (a custom order I always get when I am there), Allan had the tuna in a miso broth, for entrees I ordered the Sloping Hills Pork three ways (so good) and Allan had the lamb two ways… we split an order of the pea and marscapone ravioli with our mains. The ravioli was incredible.

Then we headed out to surf again… this time at long beach with Greg. The waves were HUGE and while I caught one amazing wave… it was way overhead and much too big for our first weekend back in the water… so we dropped Greg and Sanazj off at our cabin so they could take a hot shower and then headed out to North Chesterman’s at around 10:00 PM and surfed till about 11 PM. Yeah, it was reaaaaally dark. Surfing by moonlight pretty much.

In the morning we woke up and surfed North Chesterman’s again and checked out of Ocean Village. We caught some amazing waves and the conditions were fabulous. Best surf session of the weekend.

Overall an amazing weekend… a great anniversary with the best man in the world, and we can’t wait to get in the water again soon!