Answer these five queries before locking in your wedding and reception sites!
5 Questions to Ask Before Booking Your Venues
Let’s face it: distance and traffic are two factors that make guests reconsider attending a wedding. It doesn’t matter if your venue is beautiful. If the area is too far away or it’s known to be always congested, people might opt to skip your celebration entirely. To ease everyone’s minds, pick wedding and reception venues that are not too far away from each other (if you can hold both the rites and the reception in the same place, even better!). Ample parking space is also a plus since many guests choose to bring their own cars for special events.
If you’re thinking of holding a wedding out of town or outside the Philippines, ponder on the mobility of your older guests (can Grandma and Grandpa fly to the place? Is the venue wheelchair-friendly?) as well as possible accommodations and transportation you might need to provide (is the hotel large enough to house all the guests? Will you offer shuttles for guests booked in different hotels?).
Do an initial guest head count before considering a venue. You don’t want to book a small venue that can only hold a limited number of people. Just imagine the horror of having too many Tiffany chairs stacked against each other, with not enough space to comfortably walk in between! On the flip side, you also don’t want to reserve a large ballroom that you would only use half of. You would have to compensate by creating bigger decorations and shelling out more money to fill up the spaces.
Find out if the place is capable of providing you with full service, from the table setup and catering service down to the venue decorations and holding room for the couple. If they are unable to offer a complete package, you would have to look for your own suppliers to organize the wedding. Get the venue’s preferred list of suppliers and double check if you are allowed to hire someone who’s not on their list.
Some venues provide a list of dos and don’ts on the day of the wedding. Be sure to review their guidelines to see if the wedding ideas you think of are allowable (is it possible to hang lanterns inside the venue? Can you bring your own projector?). It’s important to know that some venues charge extra when you go beyond their recommended number of guests or borrow materials that are not included in their prearranged inventory. For those that don’t come with a ready list, write down and ask all the questions you can think of regarding their venue.
Couples get dazzled by the magnificence of a possible setting, only to get their hopes dashed when they realize that the fee is too expensive for them. Make sure you calculate the costs with all the possible add-ons and verify the payment scheme before closing the deal. Ask questions like: Do you require a 50% down payment upon signing? When should we pay for the remaining fee? Do you accept check or cash only?
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