The Wedding Series: How to Choose a Wedding Venue

Choosing a wedding venue is so much fun and it’s a great first item to book when planning a wedding! Last spring I booked my wedding venue and somehow I ended up being able to choose the venue of my dreams, but there were trade offs that I had to make.

The first step in choosing a venue is knowing your budget.

Refer to my post about wedding budgeting for more details.

After you know how much money you have in your total budget, and you’ve estimated how much each item will cost, you will be able to see how much you have in your budget specifically for your venue. Then once your have your budget for your venue set, it is a lot easier to slim down your list of potential venues.

I started by searching on google for venues closest to home then broadened my search to look at many different venues throughout the state. Each venue has a different location and vibe and there are so many cool options to choose from.

Pick out your top venues that you like online and schedule a tour to visit them in person. You can ask them questions about how they run their weddings, if they have hidden costs, and this is a great to where you can see and feel the actual vibe of the place. This is also a great time to see what dates they have available. I toured my venue over a year and a half before the wedding and their were only a couple Saturday’s left for the summer!

Write down any notes or information you want to remember so it is easier to choose between the venues after you’ve looked at more.

After you look at your favorite venues you can decide which one is the best fit for you and your fiance based on the vibe you like and the cost.

The venue is super smart to book first because:

1. They get booked out very early

2. It will most likely determine your wedding date and location

3. If you choose an expensive venue like I did, you can choose to spend less in other areas.

After choosing my venue I could then begin searching for a more affordable DJ, caterer, photo booth, florist, etc. This was a trade off I was more than willing to make because of how much I loved my venue, but some people love having a backyard wedding and splurging in other areas. Decide what’s most important for you and what things you want to splurge or save on BEFORE booking anything.

I’m so happy I got to have my wedding at the Hutton House and it was a total dream come true!

Sincerely, Ava Rains

The Wedding Series: Creating a Budget

If you read my last blog post, you know the first steps of planning a wedding. Creating a budget is the second step. It is so important to do this before booking anything.

First you’ll want to figure out who is paying for the wedding and how much each person is paying. This may be the couple getting married, parents, other family members, or a combination. Each party involved should decide on an exact number that they are willing to spend. Adding these together creates your total overall wedding budget. This number will be divided by each venue, vendor, and wedding item that you purchase.

Next, sit down with your fiance and create two lists. Make one list of your top priorities for your wedding day, and the things you will want to spend more money on. Make a second list of the things that aren’t as important to you both. These will be items that you will find for a low cost, or may be willing to sacrifice on your wedding day. Make sure that you and your fiance come to an agreement on these lists. No matter how big your budget is, you will still have to pick and choose your top priorities, and sacrifice your lower priorities.

Then, I recommend doing some research on where you want your ceremony and rehearsal. You can search online and email different venues for an estimated price quote. They will email you the price estimates and what they include in that price. I would then recommend touring venues and narrowing down to your top 2-3 choices.

After that, reach out to other vendors for price quote. You should look for a photographer, videographer, a caterer, florist, DJ or band, transportation, a photo booth, and a wedding coordinator. You should keep track of these price quotes in one organized document.

Based on the quotes you received, you should create one large estimated budget. This way, you can see everyone laid out together and you can see the total.

Make sure to also include in your budget, the cost of your wedding dress, alterations, shoes, accessories, save the dates, invitations, decorations, wedding favors, and anything extra that you want. This may also include gifts for your wedding party, wedding party proposal gifts, and a wedding gift for your fiance. (Please keep in mind that you do not have to have all of these things at your wedding, make your wedding exactly how YOU want it.)

After you have a full budget put together, your total may be much higher than the money you have available in your budget. If this is the case, it is time to look at your list of low-priorities. Start searching for more budget-friendly versions of these services or items. If your budget is still too high, consider removing some items on your low-priority list, or you may have start looking for more budget-friendly items from you top-priority list.

If after you have put you budget together, you are lower than your overall budget (which seems impossible to me lol), you can look into items that you want to add or splurge on.

Either way, I recommend having quite a bit of wiggle room in your first rough draft budgets. It can be easy to forget about things that you really want, or your vendors may have hidden costs that you weren’t expecting.

If doing all of this work and creating a budget sounds like a nightmare to you, consider hiring a wedding planner to do all of the work for you. This will cost more money to have someone do everything for you, but it might be worth it for you if it’s something you don’t enjoy, or something you don’t have the time for. I will write a blog soon about hiring a wedding planner and different packages you can buy!

Sincerely, Ava Rains

The Wedding Series: Wedding Planning 101

I decided I want to blog a bit about my wedding planning experience. Since I want to go into event planning, I want to give some helpful advice to soon-to-be brides, and I plan to start planning weddings soon!

After getting engaged, there is so much excitement and it can be a crazy time. It can feel overwhelming when 2 seconds after you get engaged, everyone you know is asking if you’ve set a date and what your plans are for the wedding.

I’m the type of person to think wayyy ahead, so I did things a bit different than other brides. I knew my dream venue and photographer were booking out over a year and a half in advance. My fiance and I didn’t want a super long engagement. So, we already had a date set, a budget, a venue booked, and a photographer booked, about 3 months before we even got engaged.

That does sound crazy, but many venues and venders book 1-2 years in advance, and I hear that more and more brides are having to do this. The positive side was that after we got engaged, we didn’t have to rush to book things. We got to relax and enjoy the engagement, and when people asked if we’d set a date, we already had one! Easy! We had a super fun engagement party with our friends and family that was stress-free. This could have also been solved with a longer engagement, but it wasn’t something that either of us were interested in.

From my experience, I do have one regret and one piece of advice for all couples getting engaged! Before doing any research, planning, or booking, I would highly recommend sitting with your partner and outlining your vision and expectations for your wedding day.

When talking about the wedding, my fiance and I were running into some disagreements with planning. We both had completely different pictures in our minds about how envisioned our big day. We had been exposed to very different weddings and were not on the same page. He was expecting us to book a party bus that would take us to a local bar before our reception. I was expecting a limo to take us to the cocktail hour at our reception venue. He would have been okay with our reception being in the backyard, but I had my dream venue stuck in my head. So I would 100% recommend talking with your fiance about exactly what you want, and talking about you expectations, even if they feel obvious to you.

After you have a solid vision together that you both agree on, the next step will be creating a budget. You will run into a ton of trouble if you start booking things without a budget in place. This is a super important step that I will write more about later!

The next step is booking venues for your ceremony and reception. Some couples plan their ceremony and reception at one location, and some couples plan for two locations.

After that, I booked my photographer, florist, and caterer. I reached out to different venders and got price quotes so that I could create a budget. I didn’t commit to a venue without knowing how much money I would have to be spending on food, flowers, photography, decorations, and everything else. I chose to book the most important things to me first, and things that would book out the quickest. It is also a great tip to put the most money into the things that are most important to you, and to cut back on the things that aren’t your top priority.

I will write more specifically about booking different venues and venders, and other wedding tips soon!

Sincerely, Ava Rains