Choosing the Perfect Wedding Venue

After getting engaged one of the main parts of the wedding that needs choosing is where you want to get married. Some people will know they want to get married in the same country they are living in where as others toy with getting married abroad. It will all depend on you as a couple but family may also come into it. If your other half is from another country then it can be a difficult decision to make but one you both need to be comfortable with.

Once you know which country your getting married in then you have to decide what venue you want. If you are having a religious service then you will most probably have two venues, one for the religious ceremony and the other for your reception. There is a lot to consider when choosing you venue as your perfect day will be based around it. I found making a list of criteria and questions we wanted to ask really helped us make an informed decision.

A good way to start looking for venues is either in wedding magazines or online. I came across this website https://www.wedding-venues.co.uk which is brilliant for getting an idea of what wedding venues are in your area. You choose which county to search in and it lists all the venues in that area with photographs and a brief description of what the venue is like. One thing to keep in mine when choosing you venue is the price of it and what it may include, which I will come back to.

Once you have an idea of the type of venue you like then its worth going to visit your  potential venues. I picked out a few, phoned then up and booked an appointment to go visit the venue and be able to ask them any questions we had. Before going to visit the venue I prepared a list of questions to ask, which I asked at every venue so there was something to compare. We also had a rough idea of what our wedding date would be. We ended up going round the venue with our parents as they wanted to come with us and make sure all the right questions were asked.

When visiting the potential venues make sure you get a real feel for the place and know what you are looking for. Do you want a venue that you take over for the day, making it very personal to you and not having random people wondering around? Do you want to get married in a church and then have the reception in a hotel or a farm where you hold dear memories? You may also have different wants to your other half but maybe some compromise is needed.

When we visited the wedding venue we finally chose I knew it was the one. I could imagine us there on our wedding day having an amazing time and it fit all our criteria. I found asking the list of questions helped us decided on what we really wanted from the venue and also what they had to offer.

One big question to ask is price. A lot of venues will take bookings up to a year or two in advance, if you are choosing a popular time of the year, keep that in mind. Every year venue prices will go up so it’s worth asking what the price will be and how it is paid: deposit and rest of payment. Some venues will also let you reserve a date for a week or so allowing you to think about it without losing the date you want. We chose to reserve our wedding date straight away, as we knew which date we wanted, and where told in the next few weeks that month would be fully booked.

Once we had time to think about the wedding venues we booked it. When booking you will need to pay a deposit to hold that date and normally a few forms to fill in too. I found it quite scary booking the wedding venue as the whole engagement/getting married then became real but we knew we had picked the right venue for us.

If you are newly engaged then hopefully this blog post has given you a bit of help on where to start looking and what to look for. My next wedding blog post will be all about what questions to ask the venue before making your decision. Let me know down bellow if you have any other questions or any requests for blog posts on weddings. If you haven’t checked out my previous blog post, Engaged, What Next? then go have a look for an overview of how to getting your wedding planning started.

Steph x