Wedding Wednesday: What to questions to ask when booking a wedding venue
Last week I shared a bit about how to narrow down your choices when searching for the right venue for your wedding. Once you do that it’s time to start calling, emailing, and booking appointments. In the age of COVID, this can be a little complicated. When we started contacting venues we found that many had limited hours for tours, some were only open to virtual tours, and others were temporarily closed even to tours.
We prioritized venues that were willing to work with our availability when it came to scheduling tours. We went to visit venues on our own, but if you are planning on bringing friends or family with you during tours make sure to inform the venue. Due to COVID restrictions, some venues have limits to the number of visitors on a tour. One of the venues we were considering was on an active military installation so they required photocopies of IDs and Social Security numbers of anyone visiting prior to a tour. Make sure to check what the protocol rules are before showing up for a visit.
Once you do have a set of venue visits scheduled you’ll want to come up with a list of questions ahead of time. There are a number of great lists out there on wedding sites. We pulled from a few of them to pick the questions that were relevant to our event. Here are some lists you might find helpful for forming your set of questions:
When we arrived at venues we also realized there were questions that were more important to us than we initially thought. We saw some sample menus that didn’t account for allergies, dietary restrictions, etc. so we made sure to check what kind of accommodations could be made. Accessibility was also a big factor. We wanted to find a venue where we could have both the ceremony and reception. We saw a lovely venue but the ceremony site was on a separate floor from the reception area and it wasn’t accessible except for the service entrance and the bathrooms weren’t accessible at all. Since we have family and friends with mobility issues we knew that wouldn’t work for us. When you start to visit venues you’ll get a sense of what is really important to you.
In this age of COVID, it’s also important to know what the policy is if your date needs to change because of the pandemic. It’s also good to know what the policy is if there is a natural disaster, family emergency, etc. Make sure you know what refund policies are in place and if there are rebooking fees if your date changes. Also, make sure that you know what the contract states in terms of refunds if heaven forbid your venue were to close down before your big day.
What sold us on our venue other than it checking all of our boxes on our must-haves and being within budget was the owner, Eva. We love her and immediately had such a good feeling about working with her. She understood what was important to us and went out of her way to make us feel welcome even during this age of adjusting how we tour sites. She even asked what colors we were thinking of and designed a tablescape for us so we could see what they would look like.
Next week I’ll share some specific questions we had or discovered during the process of venue hunting that are a little more outside of the box. These will hopefully be helpful if you are planning a wedding or other celebration.
