How to choose your wedding venue!

Top tips to choose a fun and relaxed wedding venue!

Your wedding venue is super important and sets the vibe for your day so here’s my list of tips on how to choose your relaxed wedding venue for your fun wedding.

The type of venue

When it comes to venues, there’s so many options it can get overwhelming. Narrow is down early on to the type of venue whether it’s a barn, on a farm, in your garden, a tipi or marquee, a manor house or something a bit more unique. Either way, start by narrowing it down and focus your relaxed wedding venue search on that particular venue type. 

Your ceremony

The next main thing to consider is if you’re able to have your wedding ceremony at your chosen relaxed wedding venue. Not all relaxed wedding venues are able to have a legal ceremony take place and so you can either have your ceremony elsewhere or have a celebrant lead ceremony instead. If you’re debating whether to have a celebrant ceremony but you’re unsure about it, read all about celebrant ceremonies at relaxed wedding venues here.

Capacity

When planning your fun and relaxed wedding, only invite your favourite people. Whether that’s a few people or absolutely lots, think about how many guests you want there and only look at venues that will be able to host them all. There’s nothing worse than falling in love with a venue only to find out it can’t hold your non-negotiable people. Ideally, have a rough guest number when looking for your venue. Worst case scenario though, if you love a venue and it ticks all the boxes, it’s completely ok to remove some people from your invite list to make it work, especially because not everyone needs to bring a plus one! 

Food and drinks

If you’re a foodie like me, one of the big things to think about it is the food and drink you’re having on your day. Not all relaxed wedding venues allow you to bring in outside vendors and have their own caterers for weddings. While this is completely ok, if you’re wanting something a little different or specific to you, make sure you ask your venue what the food options are and if they allow other vendors to come in for food and drink. Some venues let you bring in caterers for the evening food only and others let you for both, so just make sure you ask and see what your options are, even if you love the food options from your venue. 

Accomodation

Another thing to consider when choosing your venue is if you’d like onsite accommodation. Not all venues are able to offer this so thinking about this early on is a good way to avoid any disappointment. Some venues don’t have onsite accommodation but have offsite rooms, partnerships with air b&bs or recommendations for places to stay in the area. 

Location

Whether your venue is close to home or more of a drive, think about the location and its surrounding areas. Sometimes there are noise limitations or other factors that can impact your plans, so make sure to ask the venue about any restrictions there could be. The location makes a huge difference too. Definitely think about looking at venues outside of your immediate location too because there’s some beautiful relaxed wedding venues all over the country. Think about city weddings and country weddings, or even a venue near/on the beach, in the lake district or by the mountains. Clearly, there’s so much choice!

Decor

Arguably, this one’s either really important or not so much. But, either way, have a think about if your chosen venue is a blank slate for you to decorate yourself, a DIY venue where you have to source everything including chairs, or if the venue has basically everything you need already. Some venues are naturally beautiful and need little decor to make it look ‘wow’, whereas other venues rely on your decor upgrades and adding your personality. Either way, both can be so great. Just make your wedding space your own and it’ll be amazing.

Open space

If you’re wanting to bring in wedding suppliers like a band, photo booth, glitter station or outdoor games, you need to make sure there’s enough space for everything at the venue, whether it’s indoor or outdoor space. Have a look at my best wedding entertainment recommendations here if you’re looking for fun wedding inspo. It’s so important that there’s enough space for everyone so if you’re having a big guest list and wanting to have quite a lot of entertainment you really need to have a venue with lots of open space. Noone wants to be feeling squished all day and night when trying to have fun.

Awesome wedding suppliers…

Photography: Kirstie Garlick Photography

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