What to Look for in a Wedding Venue

Picking your wedding venue is one of the most important parts of your wedding! Here are five key factors to consider when choosing where you’ll be partying all day and night!

Capacity

By now, you’ve probably heard that you should build a guest list before any other step in your wedding planning process. This will be key to helping you decide how big of a venue you should book! When you get engaged, sit down with your partner and figure out how many people you’re inviting. Who are they in relation to you two? Are they likely to come or not? Figure out a number before you even start looking for a venue. If you go into the wedding planning process searching for a venue without knowing this guest count, and you pick a venue that can only hold 200 people, but you want to invite 400, what’s the point? So figure out the number of people that you want to be at your wedding, and find a venue that can hold that capacity first. 

Budget

Everybody has a budget. Everyone has a number. This could be based on what you’ve saved up so far, or it could be what’s being contributed to your wedding fund. So when you go looking for a venue, ask to see what the average cost of a wedding is there, but more than that, ask what’s included! Does it include your ceremony and reception, or is it reception only? Does it include your alcohol and your food or do you have to find outside vendors? Are you even allowed to bring outside vendors or do you have to use the contracted vendors that are partnered with that venue? Are you allowed to DIY things? Are you allowed to just buy a bunch of alcohol from Costco and have your friends serve it? So really consider what the value of that number is – not just like the number itself, but what do you get for it? 

Appearance

Do you even like what this venue looks like? Do you like the ceremony space? Would you enjoy getting married there and celebrating there for a few hours after? It seems like an obvious part of picking a wedding venue, but some couples get so fixated on ensuring the venue has the other factors that they forget to consider how their photos will look. For example, a church basement can hold quite a few guests and meet even the lowest of budgets, but do you like the way it looks?

Accessibility

There are two parts to this accessibility factor. The first is how accessible is the venue from an airport? Is it out in the middle of nowhere? Is there parking, or do I have to take an hour-long uber ride because I can't park my car there? This is especially important to consider if you plan on having a lot of out-of-town guests at your wedding. Secondly, consider accessibility for the human body. If you have a bunch of guests who are using wheelchairs, but the venue requires a whole bunch of stairs to attend the ceremony, and there are no ADA accessibility options, how will they be able to partake in your ceremony?

Weather Plan

Finally, what's the bad weather plan? If you’re planning on having an outdoor ceremony and there’s rain or excessive heat in the forecast, is there an indoor option to move into? How does that affect your reception layout? How does that affect your budget? Does it cost extra? Are they going to do this room flip for you, or do you need to hire labor to do the ceremony-to-reception flip? Where do your guests go while the room is being flipped?

Of course, there isn’t an exhaustive list of factors to consider when choosing a wedding venue, but based on my years of experience listening to couples, these are some of the most frequently asked about.

If this blog helped you pick your perfect wedding venue, and you’re ready to hire your perfect wedding photographer, smash that button and let’s do this!