Picking the Perfect Venue

If you read my most recent Wedding Wednesday post you'll know that there are a few conversations you can have to prepare for wedding planning after your engagement. It's important to discuss your budget, wedding style, and guest count with your partner and family before diving into the big wedding venue decision.  Your choice of venue will determine a lot of your other wedding details. Below you will find many of the factors that go into picking the perfect wedding venue...

#1. Location

This probably goes without saying but the location of your venue is one of the first factors you'll consider when searching for the perfect wedding location. First, you should decide if you plan to have a local wedding, a semi-destination wedding or a full destination wedding. From there, you'll likely consider the distance you are making guests travel, the sentimentality of the location and the surrounding area for guest lodging and accessibility.

#2. Availability

Many venues book out about a year in advance. It's important to set your expectations for venue availability when you are looking for dates to get married. Maybe you really want to get married on a significant date or a certain week based on your schedule. If so, you'll need some flexibility on which venue you choose.

You should also consider what days of the week you're willing to get married. While Saturday night weddings were the norm, Friday night weddings, Sunday weddings and other weeknight weddings have become popular as well. The more options you're open to, the more luck you'll have finding availability at a venue.

#3. Budget

Chances are, the venue will eat up a significant portion of your wedding budget. It's safe to say that about 30% of your wedding budget will go toward your venue alone (this is not including food and beverage). When laying out your overall budget for your wedding, you can narrow down your venue options by choosing a venue that's about 30% of your overall wedding budget. Some venues include food and beverage, and in this case, you can raise that percentage to about 40-50% as you won't need to look for additional catering.

Venues also often have hidden administration charges which account for about 20% of the total cost of your bill. Be sure to factor this in ahead of time so you aren't taken by surprise when you go to sign your venue contract.

#4. Guest Count

Before you pick your venue, it's important that you and your partner have a discussion about your estimated guest count. Budget, location and guest count will be the biggest filters during your search. I suggest using The Knot's mobile app search to filter by venue size first, and then by cost.  Many venues have guest minimums and some even have a guest cap. Your guest count will automatically dictate the direction you go in your venue search.

#5. Style & Vibe

Chances are you aren't going to throw a black tie affair in an old barn (not that it can't be done). You want your venue to match the theme and style of your big day. For example, a rustic wedding might best fit in a woodsy backyard setting. A more traditional wedding might take place at a wedding banquet or hotel. Refined and elegant weddings can be held at historic mansions or modern museums. The options are endless and this is a time to make your creativity shine.  The venue is one of the biggest factors to set your style and vibe, so be sure you pick an option that feels right and represents the style and vibe that you want at your wedding.

#6. Ceremony Options & Backup Plans

While considering all of your venue options, you'll want to consider where the actual ceremony is taking place. While many people opt to have a religious ceremony or town hall nuptials, many venues offer beautiful ceremony locations right on site.  You'll want to make sure that if your venue offers an outdoor ceremony site, that they also have an indoor backup plan.  Some venues will have different sized guest counts for each option. For example, our wedding could seat 230 guests outside, but only 145 inside. We had to factor that into our wedding planning to make sure we had a solid rain backup plan at our venue.

If you decide to have a ceremony at a different location from your venue, be sure to consider how you will shuffle your guests back and forth from one location to the other.

#7. Guest Accessibility and Lodging

Even if you pick the most gorgeous venue in the world, you need to make sure you're guests will have access to transportation and hotels to get to and from your wedding. This can be tricky as you don't know who is staying in town or traveling from home for the wedding. I suggest adding a questionnaire to your RSVP so that you have a better idea of how many out of town guests you have sticking around and how many guests will need access to transportation after a night of partying. Ubers and Lyfts will often offer a special wedding code for guaranteed rides from one location to another, and hotels will sometimes offer transportation services as well. Likely, you'll need to hire a bus or trolley company to get your guests safely back home.

Lastly, you'll want to consider handicap accessibility throughout your venue so that all guests can access your wedding with ease.

#8. Unique Rules or Constraints

When searching for the perfect venue, you might be surprised to find that some locations have very strict rules and constraints. For example, one of our favorite venues we looked at had a music volume limit since it bordered a luxury hotel. They didn't allow a band and required that a DJ limit their decibel volume. Another venue required.a 10:00pm curfew for similar reasons. Often sparklers and candles are restricted at historic sites. The venue we settled on had a very tight time constraint since it was open to the public during the day. We weren't allowed on site until 4:30pm which meant some of our wedding photos were taken at another location beforehand. It also meant our vendors had to hustle to get ready before our 6:00pm ceremony.

Once you decide what is most important to you, you'll be able to navigate each venues rules and constraints, but it's important that you ask questions ahead of time to know what you're working with. I suggest asking about noise restrictions, time restrictions and if you have your heart set on a grand exit, open flame restrictions.

#9. Beware of Shared Venues

During our own wedding venue search, I found that often the more 'wedding factory-esque' locations had the best packages to offer, but they also had shared spaces. In other words, multiple weddings could take place on site in one night which means you run the risk of guests overlapping. As fun as it would be to have Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn show up, no one wants a real wedding crasher from a neighboring event. Decide if this is an important factor for you and make your own decision on if you are okay with a shared space. Ultimately for us, this was a deal breaker and we eliminated shared venue spaces from our search.

#10. Preferred Vendors

As you're looking at venues, be sure to ask if they work off of a preferred vendor list. Meaning, some venues only allow certain accredited vendors to work on site. This is important because it may dictate a stricter budget for your other vendors (caterer, band, photographer, videographer, etc.). Sometimes this is helpful when planning your wedding as it narrows down your search for you, but if you were hoping to pinch pennies in certain areas, you may be more limited in your options.