In the months leading up to your big day, you’ll have a number of different tasks that you’ll need to complete. While some of these are certainly more time-sensitive than others, the whole goal behind this entire process is to maintain some type of schedule and avoid procrastination along the way. After all, it’s safe to say that procrastinating is one of the easiest ways to turn wedding planning from an enjoyable experience into one that causes some unneeded stress!
While we always enjoy posting beautiful pictures from past weddings here on our blog, we also like to make sure we feature wedding planning tips that can be helpful to those currently-engaged couples. Having worked with hundreds of couples over the years, we feel confident in our ability to provide advice capable of truly creating a seamless wedding planning process. With that being said, one area where couples always enjoy some words of wisdom is in regards to the planning timeline. Having a general calendar or to-do list to work with can be immensely helpful, and make this a fun and unforgettable experience. So…on this week’s blog, we’ll be discussing one task that you’ll want to knock out fairly early in the planning process and that happens to be your wedding venue selection. Unsurprisingly, this is a big decision that you don’t want to rush, but you also definitely don’t want to put it on the back-burner either!
Photo on thumbnail courtesy of Kelsey Nicole Photography.
Availability of Venue
It’s safe to say the wedding world is the perfect example of an industry that’s gradually grown over the years. With that, there have also continued to be more and more talented vendors entering the industry as well. This is clearly a blessing for engaged couples, as it gives them more options to pick from while they’re planning every detail of their dream wedding day. Nonetheless though, you may be surprised by just how far in-advance venues and wedding vendors can book up certain dates. Particularly with the more popular dates (Saturdays in the Fall, for example), wedding venues can have some dates booked over a year in-advance. Now this isn’t going to be the case everywhere, but it is something to consider if you were really hoping for a specific date.
Having said all of that, it’s important to book your venue early simply because of potential availability issues. Especially if you have a certain date you’re wanting or have a venue that you’ve had an eye on for quite some time, don’t wait to start the venue touring process. Furthermore, before taking the time to tour venues, it’s also a good idea to inquire about availability ahead of time. This will save you some time in determining which venues are actually available for your particular wedding date.
Vendors
With that first section in-place, it’s no surprise that it’s important to select your venue early simply so you can get your favorite venue. However, the venue selection also impacts various other decisions along the way and one of those is undoubtedly the vendors.
Venue Recommendations – Being close to the Houston area, it goes without saying that there are more than a few talented vendors in each of the different wedding professions here. Whether that be catering companies, florists, photographers or anything else, that statement holds true. With that being the case, it can be a little overwhelming researching and looking through the plethora of possible options. Any guesses why having your venue locked in can help simplify this part of the process? Well, since they’ll likely have experience working with many different vendors over the years, they can help steer you in the direction of vendors they feel confident in recommending and ones that they’ve previously worked with. For one, you should get a reliable recommendation to consider. Secondly though, if they have experience working at your particular venue, that can be quite helpful as well! Take a photographer, for example. If a photographer has had a client get married at that venue, they’ll have prior experience on where to be for all of the right shots. From the getting ready moments all the way through the final send-off, this can be valuable experience!
Availability – Going back to the previous point above about availability, there’s no doubt that it is a major advantage of getting your venue selection finalized early. After all, it may be the only way to truly lock in your dream wedding venue. However, the availability aspect expands much farther than just the venue itself. Just as wedding venues can book up many months in-advance, the same can be said about popular wedding vendors too. With that in mind, if you have certain wedding vendors that you consider to be must-haves for your wedding celebration, having a venue and date finalized can help speed up the process in getting those vendors booked. You can provide these details up-front and will be able to get an estimate right away.
All-Inclusive Packages – Once you start touring venues, you’ll likely notice that several of them may offer all-inclusive packages. While the exact contents of these packages may vary from venue-to-venue, the reason we’ve added it here is because it will help give you an idea of what vendors you’ll need to find on your own. In many instances, this can help simplify part of the process!
Finances
If you remember back in the opening paragraphs, we briefly mentioned why it’s so important to have wedding planning be an experience that’s enjoyable and unforgettable. You don’t want it to feel like a chore or cause stress. To take that one step further, one of the easiest ways to create unnecessary stress can be anything related to money, hence why we stress having a budget established early on in the planning process. This will give you an idea of who’s paying for what and how much you have to spend on the various wedding components.
How does this relate to the importance of booking a venue in a timely manner? In most cases, booking your wedding venue will be the biggest investment you’ll make. If you book your venue early on, any ideas how this will be helpful to the couple? The most obvious benefit is you’ll have the biggest purchase made and it’ll be much easier to start figuring out how much you have to spend on the other vendors (Keep in mind that you should have an idea of how much you’re looking to spend on the venue prior to scheduling tours). Once the venue is booked, you can organize the other vendors by how much of a “must-have” they are and act accordingly.
Need a Venue Near Houston?
Being a wedding venue ourselves, this blog post was definitely right up our alley. We understand finalizing a venue for your special day is definitely a big decision, but we can also confidently say that it’s not one you want to procrastinate on either. Trust us, once you have your dream wedding venue booked, it will make many of the other decisions so much simpler. Whether that be in regards to receiving recommendations on local vendors, viewing galleries of previous weddings held at the venue for inspiration or simply the peace of mind from having the biggest investment locked in, there’s a reason why we encourage couples to start touring venues early on. If you’re planning on holding your wedding near the Houston area, we would love to show you around our venue, Madera Estates, which is located just north of Houston in Conroe, TX. To schedule a free tour, simply click the link HERE to check out our online booking calendar.