It's a well-known fact that planning a wedding is one of the most stressful times in a persons life, and with the average wedding taking 2 years to plan and costing around £20,000 in total - its little wonder!
But as with most things in life, with a little planning and preparation you can dramatically reduce the stress factor and keep your bridal blood pressure nice and low!
One of the most important aspects of any wedding, big or small, is finding the right venue.
There are so many factors that need to be taken into account when it comes to choosing the perfect location for your big day - from finding a venue that fits your budget comfortably and ensuring it has the look and feel that you'd like, to the logistics of ensuring it can accommodate your guest list and that it has adequate parking available - there's so much to think about!
It can be surprisingly difficult to find a venue that meets all of your requirements, so how do you go about narrowing down your venue options in order to find the right one for you?
Here are five tried and tested ways to locate your wedding venue options and narrow down your choices, without lots of wasted journeys and hours spent on the phone!
1) Attend Local Wedding Fayres
Local wedding fayres are the ideal way to find not only wedding venue possibilities within your local area, but also to kill many birds with one stone as you will usually find everything from cake makers and florists, to jewellers and wedding entertainers all right there under one roof.
You'll have the chance to see exactly what's on offer, speak to the companies directly and ask any questions you have, take away brochures to browse at your leisure and often they will even have special offers available for on-the-day bookings to take advantage of too.
They also make for a fun and exciting day out with your bridesmaids or future spouse too, and usually only for a small entry fee.
2) Browse Bridal Magazines And/Or Pinterest For Inspiration
If you're right at the beginning of planning your wedding, then perhaps you don't know what kind of venue you'd ideally like? Which will in turn make it that much more difficult to narrow down your search.
Try browsing bridal magazines to help you to get a feel for the style of wedding venue that most appeals to you (keeping in mind the size of your guest list and budget too, of course) - maybe try creating a vision board of styles that most appeal to you to help you to build up a clearer picture of what you want.
You'll find that most bridal magazines have a whole section of ads toward the back featuring lots of venue advertisements too. Although keep in mind that bridal magazines can be expensive, so consider just browsing wedding blogs and Pinterest for free inspiration instead!
3) Take Advantage Of Online Services
As with most things in life these days, you can find online services purely dedicated to helping you to locate your ideal venues for weddings.
For example, Square Meal offers a great easy-to-use system that allows you to search venues based on your desired location or style of venue, and allows you to contact the venue directly from their platform to enquire about availability or ask for more details.
You can also create a shortlist of venues which is handy too!
4) Speak To A Wedding Planner
If your budget allows for it, hiring a wedding planner can be a great way to alleviate stress in the run up to your big day.
Most wedding planners will be only to happy to narrow down a shortlist of potential wedding venues based on your requirements, and will be happy to negotiate with the venues to get you the best deal too.
5) Take Account Of Personal Recommendations
It almost goes without saying, but probably the best way of finding the right venue is to take account of personal recommendations from friends and family.
Ask around and find out where people have attended weddings lately and what they thought of the venues, and use that when making your shortlist.
If you don't personally know enough people able to provide personal recommendations or you're getting married outside of the area you live in, try signing up to wedding forums or local area Facebook groups to ask for feedback from locals on the best local wedding venues.
No matter how you go about it, remember that the most important thing about your big day isn't the venue or the dress or anything else - it's you and your other half, and your enjoyment of your special day.
Choose a venue that you both like the look of, that sits comfortably within your budget and everything else will fall in to place - good luck and happy wedding planning!
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