Booking your wedding venue is a task that sits very near the top of every engaged couple’s to-do list, and it’s actually one of the easiest elements of your wedding to go astray on. We are seeing more and more that couples believe they need to find their wedding venue and then book a wedding planner, when in actual fact it’s much more savvy to do it the other way around. Whether you choose to work with a planner or not, we’ve broken down the most common mistakes you might make when booking your wedding venue – bookmark this page and have it on hand when you start your search.
Click here to skip straight to our downloadable wedding venue checklist.
Why should you book your wedding planner before your venue?
So often a couple falls in love with a wedding venue, signs on the dotted line, and then brings their planner on board – only to find that they begin pinpointing things they hadn’t even considered before, introducing new logistical challenges or making things they really want at their wedding very difficult. I promise you that it’s not that we like doing this – it’s just that we have many more years of experience planning weddings than you, so we know all of the potential pitfalls and can see issues before they arise.
Booking your wedding planner before your venue means they’ll be on your team when you choose it, and can foresee all of this and make sure you don’t overlook anything important. Our job is as much about protecting against and putting out planning fires as it is about aesthetics, designing, and choosing the perfect suppliers.
If you’re reading this and thinking ‘oops, we already booked our venue’ and a twinge of anxiety is creeping into your stomach, don’t worry. The next best time to bring your planner on board is now – they’ll look over what you have booked and make sure your wedding is the best it can possibly be. Every memorable, talk-of-the-town wedding starts with the boring bits – preparation is polish and logistics are luxury.
Specific Problems You Might Encounter When Booking Your Venue
These scenarios are based on real life examples of couples who booked their wedding venue before their planner, and what the specific problem turned out to be. You’ll see that in every case the problem was solved (planner magic exists!), so use this as a guide to help you avoid similar situations.
Music is really important to you, but you just found out your venue doesn’t allow subwoofers.
Every couple’s priorities are different, and where some place huge emphasis on having an amazing, curated menu for their guests to enjoy, others can’t imagine a wedding without incredible entertainment. This was the case with our couple A, who booked their (beautiful) wedding venue before coming to us for planning support. When we reviewed everything, we found that in the small print of the contract it states that subwoofers are not allowed. It may be that you, like couple A, don’t even really know what subwoofers are or what difference it makes, so this would be an easily overlooked detail for people without specialist knowledge.
In actual fact, this makes a huge difference to the sound quality of your music, and we found that bands we were contacting to work on this wedding were put out by this enforcement. It’s absolutely not to say that we couldn’t still have amazing musicians and entertain their guests in a really fabulous, memorable way, but it is something that we’d have ideally been aware of before signing on the dotted line. Knowing and advocating for your priorities is a major part of my job as a wedding planner, and I know all the questions to ask to ensure we don’t trip over issues like these as we go.
You’ve booked your dream venue that you can technically afford, but it’s eaten up the majority of your budget.
Your wedding budget is a delicate creature which we take great care in managing for you, and over a decade of wedding planning experience means I know what sort of wedding you can get in a specific place for a specific cost. Being able to afford something at face value doesn’t always mean it’s within budget, and an absolutely incredible venue that leaves you no wiggle room for that band you really want to book, those extra flowers you’ve fallen in love with, and your favourite photographer to capture it all on camera is actually just bad value.
This is where it’s beneficial to have your wedding planner on board before signing up for that venue. We already know your budget, and what else needs to fit into it after you book the venue. In the case of couple B, who had chosen a very lovely but very expensive venue, we could see straight away that the original budget they had given us was going to be very, very tight. Had we been in their corner beforehand, we’d never have shown them this venue – or if we had, it would have been with the caveat that it ticked all their boxes but was massively above budget. Deciding how much you want to pay for your wedding can already feel like an emotional and sensitive process, and there’s nothing worse than finding out you actually need more money than you’d planned for because you’re already locked into a venue that eats up a vast majority of your budget.
The venue you’ve chosen is in a gorgeous, rural location – but it’s a logistical nightmare.
And finally let’s talk about couple C, who booked an absolutely wonderful venue in a small town in rural Italy. It sounds like a dream location, utterly authentic with beautiful views and a true Italian experience for their loved ones. We will never try to deter you from a venue if you’ve absolutely fallen for it, and we adore the Italian countryside as much as you do, but you need to be aware that venues like this do pose certain logistical challenges.
For example, if your venue is not near to a major airport your guests’ travel days will be longer and more complex, and taxi transfers in rural Italy can be very expensive. In small towns you’ll often have your guests staying in multiple smaller hotels rather than across 2-3 bigger ones, so people need to travel to your wedding venue from lots of different places. This can all mean you feel obligated to put on transport and go the extra mile (metaphorically and physically) for your loved ones, all of which has a knock-on effect on costs – and can even be a factor in guests deciding whether to attend or not.
This is to say nothing of the logistical challenges of bringing suppliers in, all of whom need to be transported to the wedding venue and most of whom will require overnight accommodation – which may be limited in choice and price range.
Let’s pause for a moment, because no one likes a Negative Nancy…
It feels like an opportune moment to point out that, in none of the above scenarios, do we have anything close to a disaster on our hands. Couples A, B and C will all still have beautiful stories to tell of their weddings, and look back on them, glowing with joy, as weekends they enjoyed to the fullest. Their guests will talk about their weddings for months and years to come, because they’ll be memorable for all the right reasons.
In large part this is due to the fact that they had a planner on board, able to retroactively problem-solve and ensure they still had a wedding every bit as wonderful as they dreamed. Our intention here is not to fearmonger, but just to be very transparent about the fact that wedding planning comes with a lot more decisions and considerations than you first imagine.
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Things You Need to Look Out For/Ask/Consider When Booking Your Wedding Venue
This bit is the nitty gritty – no gatekeeping, no withholding important information, just a comprehensive list of things you need to keep in mind when booking your wedding venue. Throw away the ‘wedding venue’ checklist you downloaded online, and replace it with this one. You can open this list in a separate file and save it for later by clicking the button at the bottom of this checklist.
Before the search starts:
Before you even start googling, scrolling Instagram or browsing that venue directory, there are a few things you need to have clear in your heads. There are a mind-boggling amount of wedding venues in the UK and Europe, so starting without these key things is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We call this your Priorities Powwow, and you shouldn’t skip it – spending intentional time on this will make everything that comes afterwards easier. We always go through this checklist with our couples, so we’re working from one shared vision for the wedding.
1. Narrow down your country and region. Your search can be in two stages, first figuring out which destination you want to have your wedding in and then honing in on venues
2. List the key things that are important to you in order of priority – e.g. music, food, the view…
3. What style of venue do you like? Contemporary, industrial, historical, ballroom, something with beautiful gardens or a lake, a villa or borgo or vineyard…?
4. How many guests are you inviting? Remember one of the quickest ways to reduce your wedding costs is by cutting your guest list
5. Do you want everybody to stay together on-site, or choose a standalone venue where you travel guests in for the wedding?
6. Your anti-priorities – what do you definitely not want at your wedding?
7. Do you want to marry in the countryside or a big city, and what are the implications of this?
8. Are you happy to go with a venue’s in-house catering, or would you rather have more choice and bring someone in?
Everything to keep in mind when looking at venues:
1. What are their catering and bar service arrangements, and what do these cost? Is wait staff, bartenders and cleardown included? Who is responsible for bringing in plates, cutlery, glassware?
2. Is there a vendor list and are you obligated to use their suppliers, or do you have free reign to choose your own?
3. Are there music restrictions? Is there a sound limiter, what is the decibel limit, and how is it controlled (automatic or monitored)? At some venues your sound will automatically shut off if it gets too loud, and that can really disrupt a party.
4. Is there a curfew for you and your guests being outdoors?
5. Is live music allowed outdoors or only background music?
6. What time can your party go on until?
7. What time is the hard finish when you have to be out of the building?
8. How easy is it for people to get home at the end of the night? Are taxis readily available or do you need to put on transport?
What’s included and what do you have to arrange yourselves?
1. Is there in house lighting and is it sufficient, or do you need to hire it in?
2. What does the dancefloor look like, is it big enough and do you like it?
3. Are there suitable power sources for all of your vendors?
4. Are tables and chairs included or do you need to hire?
5. Are their toilets on site? Are there enough toilets for your guest numbers? Are they far from where your event will take place, is there an attendant and are they cleaned? Do you need to book portable toilets?
6. Is there parking on site for suppliers and guests?
7. What time can suppliers access your venue to load in and set up?
8. Is loading in easy? Is there a lot of carrying and do we need cranes or porters?
9. Is there enough time for loading in or do you need to hire extra people or ask about booking extra time?
10. How long do suppliers have to clear up and load out again at the end of the night? Do you need to buy extra time for this? The event doesn’t end when you leave!
All of these things affect both your budget, and the flow of your wedding day. It’s very important that, when you visit a wedding venue, you imagine how everything will work. Be very conscious that you keep your vision in mind and walk through the venue as you anticipate your guests will on the day. Remember that many venues have ways of doing things that they are used to, but this may differ from how you want to do things – advocate for yourself and be clear on whether things can happen the way you want them to.
Envision every space you need for the various stages of your wedding day – welcome drinks, ceremony, drinks reception, dinner and dancing, afterparty…does the flow work, are there enough spaces, do spaces need to be reused and how will that work on the day? Do you like all the spaces?
Think about the periphery of your day too, beyond your guests’ experience. Is there a room for bridal prep or for both of you to get ready in, somewhere you can store things, a green room for your band and suppliers to be when not working?
And finally, if you’re planning to host your wedding outdoors as is often the case with destination weddings, you need to consider:
- What happens if it rains? Is there an alternative indoor space that’s big enough and that you think is just as nice?
- Is there still space for guests to move from your drinks reception to your ceremony to your dinner and party under cover, without feeling cramped or like it’s second-best?
- What if it’s cold?
- Are these indoor alternatives included in the cost or will you need to pay extra? How much extra, and when do you need to decide this?
- If you need a marquee you may need to allow extra days of hire to allow for it to be built, so are those days available?
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD IN CHECKLIST FORM
The Hidden Wedding Venue Costs Couples Often Trip Up On
All of these things can potentially incur extra fees, that may or may not be obvious and clearly stated. If you’re working with a wedding planner (highly recommended, you probably see by now!) they should uncover all of this for you and advise on how it fits into your budget. If you’re viewing venues without a planner, make sure you dig deep and find out exactly what all of these extras will cost before agreeing to any of them.
Venues are very good at putting pricing somewhere in the small print, hidden away, and a great example of this would be a line that says ‘all quotes exclude VAT’. VAT can be as high as 20-24% depending on the country, so to put it into perspective a venue that appears to cost £40,000 may actually end up closer to £50,000 by the time VAT is added on. Think about all the things you could do with that extra £8000-10,000 in your budget.
Hire A Wedding Planner to Skip the Venue Stress
It probably all sounds like a lot and as I mentioned before I’m not on a fearmongering mission, but I do think there is still a lack of clarity around what’s involved in planning a wedding from a couple’s perspective. If you decide to plan on without a wedding planner, I wrote this in the hope that it would help you see through the fog and be less likely to get caught up in any unforeseen and unnecessary stresses while booking your venue.
If you’re ready to work with an experienced wedding planner who asks all of these questions for you (so you don’t have to), contact us using the button below for a friendly consultation – our planning approach is very much hugs, not handshakes.
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If you are a couple going it solo on your planning journey, you’re still very much in the right place. You might also like some of our other advice pieces, and our newly formed travel concierge services for destination weddings – email us for more information:
- Wedding lighting and sound advice
- How to beat destination wedding weather anxiety
- How long does it really take to plan a wedding?
- How to fly with your wedding dress
