Photos on thumbnail courtesy of Rachel Lynn Photography.
Even though our blog here contains a wide variety of wedding-related content, we always like to prioritize the venue aspect from time-to-time too! After all, being a wedding venue ourselves and having had the opportunity to host hundreds of weddings over the years, this is certainly something we’re quite passionate about. From researching potential venues and scheduling tours to the process of comparing possible options and more, we enjoy helping out engaged couples as they look to select the perfect venue for their big day.
With that all being said, this week’s blog post will seek to answer an important question that many couples will consider: Do you book an indoor or outdoor venue, or do you go with a mixture of the two? As you can likely imagine, your answer to this question will have an impact on the venue selection process! Before we get into more detail on that though, we would first like to give a welcome to anyone unfamiliar with our wedding venue. Madera Estates is a luxury wedding venue and event space in Conroe, TX. With our team of wedding professionals, we’re here to assist in creating the wedding of your dreams! If you’re planning on having your wedding near Houston, you’re welcome to click HERE to request a copy of our investment guide.
Starting Your Venue Search
Once you have your date and budget somewhat established, you’ll officially be ready to get the planning underway and chances are touring venues will be one of the earlier tasks you’ll start with! Especially in bigger cities, such as Houston, there can be a number of venues to consider. Furthermore, since venues can book up months (or over a year) in-advance, you’ll want to get the ball rolling as soon as possible.
Type of Venue Factors
As mentioned above, throughout this blog post, we’ll be analyzing various factors that can impact the type of venue you select. Unsurprisingly, the wedding venue selection is an important aspect of the entire wedding planning process, as it will serve as the backdrop for your big day, so it’s important to also avoid rushing this step too!
Weather – Depending on the climate for the geographic location where you plan on tying the knot, the weather could be a particularly important factor worth taking into consideration. This is especially true when deciding between an outdoor or indoor venue. For example, if you’re planning a winter wedding and live somewhere known for frigid temperatures during those months, then an indoor ceremony/reception would likely be the only way to go. A second scenario would involve the potential of rain occurring on your wedding day. While it’s impossible to predict the weather that far in-advance, you don’t want to forget about the chance of potential rainfall. Again, take into consideration the normal weather conditions for that particular area. While this doesn’t guarantee anything, it will provide you with some history to work with. In any case, if you have your heart set on an outdoor wedding, it never hurts to have a back-up plan in the event of rainy weather. A popular back-up plan here would be if the venue also had an indoor setting that you could utilize (if needed).
Wedding Theme – Do you already have a theme or general aesthetic in mind for your wedding day? The theme will impact several different aspects of your wedding. Color palette, decor, invitations, dresses, you name it! In addition, you’ll also notice that the theme can affect which wedding venue you select. The reason I’m highlighting it here is because there are going to be quite a few features of a wedding venue that you can’t change. Yes, you can personalize elements like decor, floral arrangements and so on, but many of the features are simply part of the venue. Having said that, you and your partner will want to consider the different backdrops that come with either outdoor or indoor settings, and decide which you like best. After all, throughout significant portions of the wedding photo album, this will be in the background! If you like the idea of tying the knot in a ballroom, then an indoor venue might make most sense. On the other hand, if you like having trees and the blue sky as the backdrop for exchanging vows with your soon-to-be spouse, then an outdoor venue might be the way to go! All in all, even though pictures online can help immensely, the best piece of advice we can give you is to see the venues in-person! In addition to discussing pricing/availability, this will be the only way to truly know if a wedding venue is the one!
Best of Both Worlds – It’s safe to say that every venue is going to possess its own unique qualities. With that being said, you’ll want to carefully consider the various options and ultimately book with the venue that makes the most sense for you and your partner! This leads us into the final section of this week’s blog post and that will be the possibility of utilizing both an indoor and outdoor space for your wedding day.
As you likely know, wedding days can be broken up into a few general stages: getting ready moments, ceremony, reception and final send-off. If your venue has multiple spaces available for couples (in other words, an outdoor AND indoor space), then you can opt to use one of them for the ceremony and the other for the reception. This allows couples to have the flexibility to choose whichever set-up they would prefer. Not to mention, by having both an outdoor and indoor space available, couples also have a built-in contingency plan immediately. While you never want to think about the possibility of potential rainfall on your wedding day, you also don’t necessarily want to ignore it altogether either.
To provide you with a real world example of this final section in-action, we’ll take a look at our wedding venue, Madera Estates. Along with our getting ready suites and numerous picturesque photo opportunities around the property, we also have an outdoor space (in front of the Grand Fireplace) and an indoor space (the Hacienda). This allows couples with more than a few possibilities, in addition to a final dance under the stars, final dance in the Hacienda while your guests line up for a final send-off and more!
Book Your Wedding at Madera Estates in Conroe, TX
In the end, I think most engaged couples would agree with me when I say selecting your wedding venue is an important decision in the overall wedding planning process. While you’ll be plenty busy with other planning tasks later on down the road, finalizing your venue will definitely help in getting the process started. By the way, if you book with a wedding venue that also offers all-inclusive packages, that can certainly be helpful as well!
We’ve already mentioned our wedding venue, Madera Estates, a couple of times thus far in this blog post, including an example of how couples can utilize both the indoor and outdoor space for their wedding celebration. If you are interested in learning more about our venue or even just want some more information about pricing/availability, feel free to click HERE and fill out our online contact form. Likewise, we linked it above too, but for those interested in checking out our investment guide, you’re welcome to click the link HERE.