4 things to consider when you’re choosing a wedding venue

So, you’re engaged and have now taken the first few steps. You may have chosen a date for your wedding too! In my mind, the next logical thing to organise would probably be the venue. I actually chose my dress before I decided on a venue, but in some cases you may wish to pick your venue first in case you have a theme or become inspired to have one that links into it. I personally think there are four main things that need to be considered:

Venue location

If you want to get married abroad, you should consider where you want to go. You may need to think about what the weather is likely to be like at certain times of year (you might want to avoid hurricane or monsoon seasons!) Even in the UK, where the weather is completely unpredictable, you may try to guess when we’ll have fair weather.

When considering the location of our wedding and reception, we chose a church that had a lot of meaning to us. It then made sense that we should choose a reception venue nearby so that it would be easy to get to for our guests. We stayed quite local, knowing that that way it shouldn’t be an issue for relatives to attend and our venue had wheelchair access. Elderly relatives may not have attended has we gone further afield and it was important to us that they could come. Meaning and accessibility may be things you also wish to consider.

Beach Wedding Venue

Venue style

Think about whether you like modern buildings or old buildings. Or perhaps you’d like to hold your wedding in a field! Think about where suits you and your partner and the kind of wedding you’d like to have.

If you have a theme in mind, make sure the venue fits with it. Sometimes a venue may inspire a theme!

Venue availability

If you like a venue, is it available on the date that you want to hire it? Alternatively, you may wish to set your wedding date depending on when a venue is available.

Your budget

One of the most important things to consider is whether a venue fits in with your budget. You may have luck with haggling in some places!

Somestimes venues may be more expensive in the summer. It could be worth finding out if it is cheaper at other times of year. Many wedding services are cheaper when it’s not peak season (May – September).

Further advice

One of the biggest lessons I learned when I was looking around wedding venues was that you need to ask lots of questions to make sure it’s the right place for you. You should absolutely go to look at the venue! One venue my husband and I thought we had our hearts set on looked great online, but we were disappointed by it in real life.

In the end we chose Little Hermitage in Higham, Kent. It’s a Grade II listed Georgian manor house, which perfectly suited our needs. It was within budget, a good size for the number of guests we wanted, wheelchair accessible, a great location and a beautiful old building.

Little Hermitage Higham Kent - Wedding Venue
Credit for this photo goes to Robert Marriott Photography

It looks brilliant both inside and out and has beautiful gardens, where you can get married outside.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BTWxli1Abmc/?taken-by=autumns_mummy

Good luck with finding your venue. Let me know where you’ve chosen, I’d love to hear from you!

7 thoughts on “4 things to consider when you’re choosing a wedding venue”

  1. Aw this is really helpful! I am not married yet (but I will be at some point being that we already have the child lol), I’ll definitely make sure to ask a lot of questions! #bestandworst

  2. I so agree you need to ask a lot of questions and have a list ready. I remember my Mum thinking of loads of stuff! Love the new header…is it new??? Thanks for sharing with #bestandworst x

  3. We had two weddings, her and in South Africa, both different but equally amazing. I would love to convince my husband to have another but not likely. Fab tops here, asking lots of questions is key and seeing lots of places and not settling x

  4. It looks like you chose a beautiful venue. Such a lovely post, filled with advice that I’m sure will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for linking it up to #PostsFromTheHeart

  5. These are some really good points and things to think of. We found budget, availability and location key points when we were choosing our venue! #PostsFromTheHeart

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