Your wedding venue is an integral part of your big day. Choosing the right venue can make or break the celebrations and ensure your special day runs smoothly. It can also impact your budget and the scope of celebrations.
Choosing your wedding venue needs careful consideration. It’s not good enough to simply book in somewhere because it looks the part or commit to holding your wedding there because it’s available. Before you sign on the dotted line, you need to ask some really important questions about your wedding venue.
How Many Guests?
You need to know how many guests the venue can hold so you can see if it will work for your guest list. There is a maximum capacity for different venues, so looking around to see what wedding venues in my area are available and what their capacities are can help you determine which ones you should consider.
Do You Get Exclusive Use?
You need to ask the venue if you get exclusive use of the room or any other areas of the venue for your big day. It might not seem important, but having strangers wandering through your celebration might be off-putting and upsetting. Be sure you know what you can expect, what other events or weddings will be going on at the same time and any clauses for exclusivity/use of amenities outside of the main function room, etc.
Do They Have A Point of Contact?
You need to organise all of your vendors and guests with the venue to get things ready for the big day. Even if they’re supplying some within a package aspects such as hair and beauty vendors, florists, cake makers, and so on will need access and to know where to head to help you get ready. Having a point of contact you can organise things with will make everything so much easier.
Can You Use Your Own Suppliers?
Following on from the above point, are you able to bring in your own vendors, or will you be restricted to using their recommended vendors or in-house services? This isn’t an issue if you’re happy for them to take control of some of the organisation; however, if you want to use specific suppliers or additional services outside of what they supply, you need to know if they will allow this or if they have restrictions in place.
Are Timings Flexible?
A timeline for the actual wedding day is important to make sure things run on time. But you cannot always guarantee things will work out as planned. This is especially true if you are hosting your ceremony in a separate location from the reception.
How flexible are the timings, and what are they like in terms of being flexible with plans if required? Most experienced wedding venues will know the approximate timings for what you want and how long things will take and they will set their timings according to this. But asking about pre-planned timings and flexibility is still a good idea.
Are There Any Restrictions?
Some venues will have restrictions on certain things that might make you think twice about booking with them. There could be restrictions on open flames, large floral displays, candles, confetti, etc. Ask about any restrictions before buying anything to ensure you can use everything you need or want at your wedding. Knowing beforehand what is and isn’t allowed will avoid disappointment
