Wedding Venue

Wedding Venue selecting a wedding venue is one of the first and biggest decisions you’ll make as an engaged couple — it will influence your vendors, budget, decor, and even attire. Here pro planners break down everything you need to know when weighing different options.

Make A Family List Invitations

Just check out how many people you’d like to invite to your big day, since not all places can accommodate a wide variety of wedding sizes. Nearly every venue will have a guest count minimum: “Be sure to aim low in your numbers, it’s easier to add guests than to deduct,” says Diane from Dee Kay Events. If your final attendance number winds up being smaller than you had anticipated and you have to pay for extra plates, she recommends asking the wedding venue if they can throw in a couple more appetizers during cocktail hour or add extra time to the reception festivities.

Wedding Venue Timing

Let’s do your homework and find out what the going rates are in your desired wedding location. Online wedding venue directories, such as The Venue Report, allow you to search by location, price, and wedding venue type, among other criteria. Determining how much you can afford will help you avoid the heartache of falling in love with a place that’s well out of your price range, you don’t want to spend more than 50 percents of your total wedding budget on your wedding venue. Frequently, couples hire us after they find the venue, and we wish they would book us first before doing anything. Couples get so excited and want to lock in the date and place that they don’t think about all of the other expenses that they have to cover.

Select Your Wedding Date

Wedding dates can be significant for a variety of reasons. some couples choose to wed on the day they met, their parents or grandparents anniversary date, or for auspicious reasons that numbers have in their culture or religion. Others may pick a specific time of year and season but not a specific day. If you can be flexible with your date and choose an off-season month, you’ll often be able to secure the venue of your dreams at a lower rate. For example, you’d likely pay less for a Friday wedding in February than you would for a Saturday in June. Time of year, day of the week, and your engagement length will all impact your negotiating leverage with vendors.