Photos on thumbnail courtesy of Ama by Aisha #amabyclaudia.

Let’s talk about wedding planning! As we’ve mentioned numerous times before on our wedding blog, the entire process of planning your big day is filled with so many exciting elements. You’ll have the opportunity to meet with several wedding professionals that will essentially fill out your vendor dream team. You’ll be able to browse through social media to gather ideas and inspiration for your special day. You’ll design your day-of schedule to map out your wedding from the getting ready moments all the way through the final send-off. To sum it up, you’ll be quite busy in the months leading up to your wedding, but there are countless fun items to complete along the way!

Throughout all of these exciting activities, there is one thing you will want to avoid and that happens to be stress! As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, wedding planning is going to require you and your partner to complete a number of to-do’s before the big day arrives. While this should definitely be a fun and memorable experience, it can potentially become stressful if you don’t stick to a schedule and make sure you’re completing the time-sensitive items in a timely manner! This is a major reason why we provide our couples with a “Wedding Planning Timeline” in their client portal to ensure they have another resource to help stay on schedule.

Given that certain items need to be completed earlier than others, this week’s blog post is going to discuss a wedding planning task that should arguably be one of the first you complete. Of course, you’ll want to start with establishing a budget and deciding who’s paying for what, but after that, you’ll be ready to start scheduling venue tours and evaluating potential wedding venues. Throughout this blog post, we’ll discuss just why that is the case!

Availability

While every wedding planning task is important in its own right, there are some that require a little more urgency. That’s not to imply you need to rush through them, but rather they tend to be time-sensitive. Touring and booking your wedding venue is a prime example of this. Without a doubt, your wedding venue will occupy a significant portion of your budget and will serve a key role in the entire process. One of the biggest reasons why you’ll want to get started on this task early on is because venues can get booked up months (or even over a year) in-advance. Not to mention, if you’re planning on tying the knot on a popular day or season, the urgency factor carries even more weight! Long story short, for availability reasons, researching potential venues and scheduling tours should be considered a priority item at the start of wedding planning!

Budget

As I mentioned in the previous section, your wedding venue rental is going to be one of the bigger purchases you make for your wedding. While we always recommend establishing an overall budget early on, knowing how much you’ll be allocating to the venue component will make future decisions a little easier. Essentially, you’ll have one of the major decisions finalized and can start game-planning how much you can spend on the others. Just as sticking to a schedule or timeline can help alleviate stress throughout the wedding planning process, so can abiding by your established budget. We always encourage couples to leave a little flexibility on the budgetary numbers as well to account for unforeseen expenses that could pop up. In any case, knowing that your venue rental should be a certain percentage of your total budget and then getting that purchase finalized will make matters easier as you continue on in the planning process!

Referrals

Thus far in this blog post, we’ve covered a couple of key advantages associated with making your venue selection the first wedding planning task you complete (after setting your budget). However, another reason why you may want to get your venue booked early is because you’ll now have a contact in the industry who can help with future planning decisions. Particularly for those living in bigger cities (Houston would be a great example!), it can feel a little overwhelming going through all of the potential vendors to choose from. Whether that be photographers, florists, caterers or anyone else, there are definitely more than a few talented wedding professionals out there! With that being said, having someone in the industry who can provide recommendations that they’ve previously worked with can be very helpful. Once you have your wedding venue booked, that would be a great time to inquire about local vendors to consider for your big day! Not to mention, odds are these particular (recommended) vendors will also already have experience working weddings at that specific venue, which is another plus!

To add to this, once you have your venue selected, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check out their social media pages and see if they tag vendors from past weddings. This way, if a particular element from one of these weddings (such as the floral arrangements or photo styles) stands out, you may want to reach out to that vendor for your own wedding!

Venue Packages

Going hand-in-hand with the section above about referrals and recommendations, another advantage worth mentioning is the fact that once you start the venue evaluation process, you can learn more about the different packages out there. For instance, let’s take a look at all-inclusive packages. While you may have initially thought you would simply book a venue rental and then have to make numerous other decisions before the big day, all-inclusive venue packages can help streamline things and simplify future choices. To sum it up, until you start researching venues and meeting with them at tours, it’s tough to know what packages are out there, and which makes the most sense for you and your partner’s big day!

Make Sure You Get “The One”

Unsurprisingly, a wedding venue will play a major role in your wedding celebration! There’s not much more we need to say to back up that point. As we’ve referenced throughout this blog post, there are several advantages to starting the venue selection process early on. Nonetheless, the biggest reason why you should start touring venues right away is because you want to make sure you get “the one” and ensure your wedding directly resembles what you had envisioned for the big day. So…as we wrap up this week’s blog post, we encourage you to make the venue selection one of the first (if not the very first) tasks you complete in the wedding planning process. Start checking out the social media pages for venues in the area where you plan on tying the knot. Reach out to them to discuss pricing and availability, as well as any other questions you may have. Lastly, begin scheduling tours and let the fun of wedding planning begin!

Need a Wedding Venue Near Houston

Are you currently engaged and planning a wedding near the Houston area? If so, we would love to show you around our wedding venue, Madera Estates! Located in Conroe, TX (just north of Houston), we’ve had the pleasure of hosting hundreds of weddings over the years and truly enjoy helping bring dream weddings to life. To learn more about our luxury wedding venue and event space, you’re more than welcome to request a copy of our Investment Guide HERE. In addition, if you would like to view some photos of the various spaces that make up Madera Estates, feel free to click HERE to check out our photo gallery.