Making sure your wedding venue is perfect for you.

Nov 19

Choosing your wedding venue is one of the toughest decisions you’ll make in your wedding planning journey. Why? I suppose it can feel like a lot of pressure to make the right choice for you and all of your guests. And there is the overwhelm, with so many options, seemingly a never ending list (ie. the internet!) and so many variables involved - number of rooms, beds, pricing, wedding spaces, extra costs, supplier restrictions, locations, proximity to other accommodations for guests…the list goes on…and on!

When there’s so much to consider at each turn with wedding planning, each decision should comes down to your personal priorities, including the venue. Time after time, our couples priorities are:

Price
The budget isn’t the most important thing about your wedding, far from it. But the venue decision dictates largely how the budget is going to go. The literal cost of the venue itself plays a part of course but two other things people don’t tend to think about are:
The number of beds, who will use them and what you can reasonably charge guests to stay at the venue. Once you’ve shortlisted your venues, it’s important to map this out for each one so that you know what guests will be contributing back to your budget and what the real venue cost will be to you.
And then there’s the other costs. We’re not talking about costs for extra spaces, late night parties etc. (although you should definitely ask for these!) we’re talking about supplier restrictions ie. a rule that you must use a certain catering. Get clear on these restricted or ‘preferred’ suppliers and their average costs before booking your venue.

2. Accommodation and location

With guests potentially travelling from far and wide, airport proximity is going to be key. But ask yourself, are all my guests confident driving in Italy? If not, is it important that bus transfers / taxis are available? And how much would these likely cost? Can my guests afford these?

And once they’re at your location, or nearby, is it easy to travel around, or will there be other transport costs involved that affect either you, or your guests?

We only recommend venues that have accommodation within walking distance or within 10 minutes by car/bus and we factor bus trips to every wedding event at the first budget stage before contracts are signed with W&W, so that our couples know their guests will have a stress free experience of their wedding events.

3. Style

We’ve all pictured our dream Italian weddings over and over again and some of us are lucky enough to have already lived our own Italian wedding dream. One thing that flows through and connects each couples’ vision is the atmosphere they want to create at their wedding. This is created by a range of things but the venue and it’s spaces really drives this.

For me, the atmosphere is set primarily by the people present and then, the space that they’re in and how it’s dressed.

So ask yourself -

What will your guests see when you’re getting married? Are the spaces big or small? Do they suit our numbers? What’s the light like (through the day)? What colours will there be around us? What could we do with the spaces?

We hope you’ve enjoyed delving a little bit into the venue search and a glimpse of the questions we’re asking ourselves, and our couples when we’re helping them to find their perfect venue.

At the venue finding stage, wedding planners are there to present lesser known locations along with the popular ones, ask the right questions, consolidate the information and options and present the right venues straight to you. Your role should be to review easy to digest information and have a really tricky job of choosing from a range of options that all suit you and your needs!

Whether you’ve just started looking at venues, or you’re deep in a venue spreadsheet masterpiece, if you’d like some support to make sure you find the perfect venue, email Lucy to arrange a chat.