Wedding Updates
I am SO excited to share that Ryan and I have officially booked a date and venue for our wedding! We are getting married on Friday, May 20th, 2022! YAY!
I wanted to share a bit more about our venue process, my advice so far, and why we made all the decisions we did incase anyone is in the same boat (or just curious!)
If you want to catch up on Our Proposal Story, you can read the post here.
How we chose our venue
Out of everything we are booking for our wedding, we both agreed early on that the venue was the most important to us. We had a general idea of when we wanted to get married (Spring 2022) but decided to keep the month and date open so that we would have more flexibility with the venue.
So, we started off by booking a lot of tours at a lot of different venues! We scheduled tours at country clubs, manors, farms, and mansions.
We started by looking at all the mansions. We looked at five. It was a bit excessive. We did not need to look at five mansions to decide we did not want to get married in a mansion, lol. We didn’t like the idea that our guests would be separated in different rooms or be crowded in one. We also decided somewhere throughout that process that our ideal venue would be all outside, which only one of the mansions offered. That one we actually loved, because the building itself was beautiful from the outside and there was plenty of grass outside of it to have the entire wedding. However, the venue was strict and did not allow tents, so if it were to rain we would be forced to have the entire wedding inside the mansion. There were a few issues with that. We were not allowed to see the inside the building due to Covid restrictions but from what we could gather from peeking through the windows we did not like the inside. It was also super small – it could only hold 85 people. So, like the others, we knocked it off the list.
That week we had a virtual tour with a catering company that owned multiple waterfront venues. They looked really pretty, and were all inclusive. However these venues only allowed us 4.5 hours for the entire wedding which I felt was not enough time. I did not want to have to be rushed throughout the wedding or kick people out at the end. But we decided to keep it on the list.
Next, we looked at a farm out of state. This was the first venue Ryan and I had a really good feeling about immediately when we got there. We LOVED it. It was a huge property, on top of huge hills, overlooking a large, beautiful river. The view was stunning! This particular venue had multiple different venues on site that we got to check out, and we decided we loved two of them. One of them was completely outside with a tent, which we decided was our favorite! At this point, we still had three other tours lined up – two of them were country clubs for the next day!
The first country club was possibly the worst venue we looked at, and the second was actually pretty nice. However I wasn’t crazy about the fact that there might be members at the clubs during our wedding and worried it would lack privacy and intimacy. We were able to cross those off the list, and although we loved the farms, we still had one more tour scheduled for a week later.
This last venue was the one we were the most excited to look at. We would have visited it first but the earliest date the coordinator gave us was 3 weeks away. A few short hours before the tour, the coordinator ended up canceling on us. I could not get in touch with her after that. Unfortunately that forced us to knock it off the list. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, because it was by far the most expensive one, lol.
Some time went by, and we still thought about the farms and almost decided to have the wedding there. However, something inside of me decided I needed to “keep looking.” I don’t know why. We had found a venue we loved, but it was not all inclusive and I started getting stressed about that. I decided I needed more options. I researched the waterfront properties again, and discovered we could add on more time (for a high price). I booked a few tours on the waterfront property and took my mom with me since Ryan was working. I actually liked one of the venues in person, but not as much as the farms. I had a feeling Ryan would not like it more than the farm either! I showed Ryan the photos when I got home and he didn’t like it so we took it off the list.
After even more thought, we came to the conclusion that the farm was THE one! We both had a really good feeling on our tour, and absolutely loved it and could see ourselves getting married there. I just kept second guessing myself! Even though it will probably be more expensive, and a lot more to coordinate, I know in my heart it is the place for us!
How we chose our date
Okay, now going back to the date! We decided on Spring of 2022. We both wanted to get married during the warmer months but didn’t want it to be too hot, and ideally we wanted a full outdoor wedding. I think planning a big wedding in less than 12 months would have been too stressful for me. On the flip side, we didn’t want to wait 20 + months to get married. We wanted to have flexibility with the date as well, because finding our dream venue was more important than having our wedding on a specific date.
Once we settled on the venue, we gave the farm our preferred months and they were able to give us available dates. We were open to Fridays, Saturdays (though we were cautious since they tend to be pricier) and Sundays. We ended up going with Friday because it was about $1,500 cheaper than Saturday. It was never important to us to have a Saturday wedding, and most of them were booked anyway. While we do realize that having a Friday wedding means people may have to take off work, we decided we preferred it to a Sunday. We wanted people to be able to enjoy themselves, stay as late as they want, and not have to worry about going to work the next morning.
And besides, what is convenient for some people may not be convenient for everyone else. You cannot please everyone and this is not the time for that anyway. This is what we decided would be best for us as a couple!
My advice so far
As far as the Venue:
- Do research online and talk to people you know! I wish we had done more research online before looking in person. We could have easily eliminated multiple venues this way.
- Know what questions to ask. Some of these may be super obvious but can be easy to forget! This kind of goes back to my first tip but if you know you want your wedding completely outside make to sure to ask about a rain plan. We also made sure to ask how long we would have the venue for. Some places only allow a certain amount of time so be sure to consider the time they offer. Ask what is included with the venue. There is such a variety when it comes to venues. Some are all inclusive and include a 9 month wedding planner, and some only offer a venue and nothing else. Another thing to consider is the amount of people a venue can accommodate. It is good to have an idea of your guest list going in.
- Start early! Venues fill FAST especially on Saturdays.
- If you have no idea what you want, I would suggest looking at a variety of venues: like 1 farm, 1 country club, 1 hotel, 1 mansion etc instead of starting off looking at 5 mansions.
- Keep an open mind! I never thought I would have wanted to get married on farm but here we are!
- Some places look way different in person. Most of them looked better in person, but some did look worse lol.
- Plan your tours strategically. Plan your tours based on location to save time and gas. I was just randomly planning all the tours as I heard back from the venues. One day we ended up driving 45 mins north for a tour, then an hour south for the second and then another hour and a half north for the third venue and then back down an hour home. (To be honest this is how most of the days went LOL I should have included Ryan more in this because he would have planned it better!)
- Ask for discounts! We ended up getting two discounts on our venue and one of them was because we paid in full.
For the Date:
- Consider the weather! This is super obvious but since our wedding will be completely outside we chose a date when we thought it would be warm (hopefully lol).
- Saturdays are usually more expensive. Most venues offer lower prices for Fridays and Sundays and even lower prices for weekdays.
- Think about holidays. Ryan didn’t want to do the following weekend because of Memorial Day – he was worried not as many people would be able to come and our anniversary would always fall around the holiday. I actually think some venues charge more on holidays.
- Consider other special days like birthdays, other anniversaries etc. You might not want to have your wedding the same day of your mom’s birthday or your sister’s anniversary. I didn’t want to get married in June because both Ryan and my birthdays are in June.
- Consider wedding colors. This is not a huge deal but if you’re really set on having pastels as your wedding colors a Spring may be more appropriate for that than a Fall wedding, but it’s your day and ultimately up to you!
I can’t wait to share more about wedding planning process! Clearly Ryan is just as invested as I am which I am so grateful for because I could not do it alone! I will be waiting until after the wedding to announce the venue for safety reasons, but I will continue to share as many details as I can. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!
Love,
Colleen C Cook
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