You might have been nervous about meeting your partner’s family, about discussing getting married with your partner’s parents, about proposing (or being proposed to!), but the biggest challenge of the wedding has got to be finding the right wedding venue for you.
You’ll find prices going up, and availability shrinking the longer you search, so today we’re presenting a short guide to finding the one wedding venue that’s right for you.
Decision Decisions Decisions
If there’s one venue that you’re dead set on – the place you met, the place your parents were married or the place your partner has been planning a wedding in since before they met you – you will have to fit the rest of your plans around it.
If you don’t have any preconceived ideas, however you can pin down the details for your wedding first and use those criteria to find your venue.
Start to think about:
- How many people you want to invite
- Where they’ll be coming from
- Whether they have any access needs
- Whether you’ll be providing food
- If you’ll need space and equipment to form a dancefloor!
You should also consider what you want your reception to look like: are you dreaming of a countryside wedding with vistas of trees and fields, or would you prefer a city based reception, perhaps in one of London’s most iconic venues.
This will shorten your search considerably. You can narrow down the many, many available venues to the ones with the correct capacity, the ones located close to transport links that are convenient for the majority of your guests and the ones with the space and services you need!
Having a clear idea of what you want from the reception also gives you a stronger position to negotiate from. You’ll know what’s good value, what you don’t need and when to walk away from somewhere that’s not providing what you want for your big day!
You can make the process of searching and shortlisting by using a service like VenueScanner to see what’s available and sort and filter the venues according to your preferences – a little like searching for a property on AirBnB! Making use of a venue booking service is much faster and more convenient than manually calling and discussing possibilities with every venue in the area you’ve decided on. This is the key to not getting so stressed you can’t relax and enjoy your wedding!