Rancho Buena Vista Adobe

Beautiful, historic venue. Filled with old world charm and crowned by a lovely courtyard. It’s a terrific place to learn more about the rancho life in old California while celebrating a wedding.

We chose the Adobe for our July 2013 wedding. I highly recommend checking it out if you’re not into beach or hotel weddings. It’s perfect for hispanic style, barbeques, casual, eco or rustic weddings. If you like things really formal this is not the place for you. The look and atmosphere of the venue, and the fact that it is private, were overwhelmingly the most important factors for us, and the Rancho definitely delivered. Our wedding turned out beautifully.
I’ll list out the pros and cons!
PROS:
1) Beautiful outdoor venue full of history, charm, and character at every turn.
2) Said charm makes for many beautiful photo spots and most of the time you don’t have to worry about ugly ‘exit’ signs etc in your photos.
3) Although we didn’t utilize these items, they do provide some basic chairs and tables which can save you money on rentals
4) It’s private, so you will be the ONLY thing happening at the time and date that you book for… no walking around a hotel seeing 3 other brides and someone else’s wedding next door, or tourists gawking at you while you try to take pictures
5) There are a lot of cool ‘spots’ here to choose from — brick driveway, interior main courtyard, wishing well courtyard, another side concrete patio area, etc.
6) It’s owned by the city, so you don’t have to deal with an on-​site wedding coordinator whose job it is to make you spend as much money as possible
7) You can use any vendors, which is an extremely rare occurrence at wedding venues nowadays. Also a bonus that you’re not forced to pay a lot in a rental fee that includes stuff you don’t want or need.
8) Because it’s in VISTA instead of San Diego, you are not subject to the ridiculous 9 pm noise ordinance, and can enjoy a slighter longer party with music and alcohol going until 10 pm!
9) Ask for Santos when you book — she is in charge and is very friendly and helpful! The girl I originally spoke with on the phone is not competent. she originally put us down for the wrong date!
10) Since you can use any vendors, you are allowed to bring your own alcohol which saved us about $ 1,500 for 60 people (there’s a BevMo in Oceanside that offers free delivery of chilled beverages; buy your wine during the 5 cent wine sale!)
11) Rental price is very reasonable and they do not nickel and dime you or try to trick you (see #6)
CONS:
1) Historic venue makes for pretty strict rules (for example — you can’t hang anything on the trees bushes or the walls or use nails tape etc, you can’t throw flower petals or bird seed)
2) They do have a small on-​site kitchen that can be used *but* I believe this is only feasible with a small wedding as it is not equipped with commercial sized ovens/​micros/​etc., we had to have extra prep tables for our caterers
3) There are no nice hotels nearby — we picked a hotel on the beach in Carlsbad for our guests and got a shuttle
4) You have to rent EVERYTHING — we had to get a generator to make sure we had enough power, dance floor for our guests and the band, dishes/​silverware, mats for the caterers, etc. If you have your wedding here make sure you book your rentals early on and/​or save a large chunk of your budget for that
5) You can only serve beer and wine — no liquor, so no signature cocktail or whiskey bars allowed
6) The people in charge make questionable decisions about the landscaping. There is a large tree in the main courtyard. In between booking our wedding and doing the walk through, the tree died. Now I will give Santos credit that this happened shortly after we booked and she did call to tell us, however it wasn’t a big deal because we weren’t going to have our ceremony under it. Unfortunately they decided the best way to handle it would be to put up an ugly farm-​like fence around the tree and fill the entire huge area with mulch. This cut out a large portion of the courtyard (maybe 25%) and forced us to move our cocktail hour to a different area. Also, it was just ugly and took away from the historic character. Also in between my doing the walk through and our ceremony, someone decided it would be a good idea to shear off the beautiful hanging vines on the courtyard wall in a straight horizontal line (they grow in arches.) We were having our ceremony against this wall and it made the vines look a little weird. This is a main photo spot.
7) No backup if it rains
8) Events are limited to 5 hrs, but you can rent for longer to do getting ready, picture time, prep, breakdown etc. We rented from 1 pm — 11 pm and the actual event was 5 – 10 pm. Cleanup 10 – 11 pm.
As far as i know this is definitely not one of the most sought after venues in SD county and it was easy for us to get our day, but I think it’s getting a lot more popular so book early if you can.

I chose the Rancho Buena Vista Adobe for my wedding venue in March 2012. The location holds sentimental value for me because I attended several day winter camps when I was younger with my sister where we dipped candles, stamped leather Christmas trees and lassoed wooden steer. The history of the Adobe is fascinating and they’re open several days a week for guided tours where you can learn about some of the first Vista settlers.
When deciding on a wedding venue, we knew we wanted something rustic and simple. Being a historic location, there were a lot of strict rules for using the Adobe as our wedding venue. No hanging lights along the awnings, but they could be lightly placed on top of the bushes. No liquor; beer and wine only. Absolutely nothing suspended from the magnolia tree. No throwing of rice, confetti or anything that would litter the grass.
Despite the rules, we were able to work in most of the details we wanted without much trouble. The Adobe provided the chairs for guests. Originally we were going to have the ceremony on the brick path outside the courtyard but found the bricks to be very unstable and dangerous for the older guests, so we opted to have both the ceremony and reception inside the courtyard. With just under 100 guests, everything fit well, including the chairs for the ceremony, the reception tables, the dance floor and space for the DJ.
Santos with the City of Vista was my main contact while planning our wedding, and she was wonderful. When the pre-​wedding anxiety kicked in, she was available to answer all of my questions.
One of my only gripes about the Adobe is that they don’t provide a working kitchen for the caterers. Luckily our caterer found a spot to set up a grill and did the best they could with just that, but a full kitchen for prep would have been ideal.
Our wedding came out beautifully and we couldn’t have been happier. If you have it in your mind to have a simple, rustic, beautiful wedding, we would highly recommend using the Adobe.