Monday Tips || 09.06.14

I love following so many Wedding businesses on Facebook, especially on Friday's & Saturday's when everyone posts pictures of the weddings they're involved in. It's crazy how different everyone's weddings are; even (for example) if it's a venue I've seen pictures of countless times before - they never look the same from week to week.

So this week I thought I'd share what I think is important to consider when you're starting to consider venues for your Wedding Reception (or Civil Ceremony and Reception)

One of the main factors which made us look in a specific region for Wedding Venues is that we needed somewhere that could host our families for the whole weekend, Friday through till Sunday. I didn't want to get married on Anglesey and make Mark's family travel the whole way and fork out for hotels while my own family didn't have that expense - and Vice Versa. For us it had to be somewhere of equal distance between Liverpool and Anglesey. The venue needed to hold a Civil Wedding License and have enough bedrooms for everyone and dining facilities for the family meal on the Friday night and Sunday lunch as well as the wedding. 

Now there are countless venues in North Wales, each offering something completely unique, not all are suitable for every couples style. But I think that there are some fundamental issues which need to be addressed when narrowing your list of venues to visit.

• Does the Hotel have decent car parking facilities on site?
• What are the roads like to and from the venue, will it be easy for guests to find?
• Is it a reasonable distance from home/church?
• What are the daytime and evening capacities and are they adequate for you?
• If you've already seen their Wedding Packages and pricing structure - are they within your budget?(we'll cover this in a separate post soon)
• Do you know anyone who's already been married there? How would they rate it? Have you seen their photo's and would you be happy having your Wedding memories made there?

Any reputable venue will have information like this on their Website, but if they don't then I think an e-mail with a request for the information is in order.

There will be a completely separate post on deciding on THE venue once you've met with their Wedding team and received a quote - that will come next week.

We found our venue by accident, we'd been to see a Hotel a little further up the road which had been a waste of time because they didn't tell us until the very end of the meeting that the Hotel bedrooms we're completely booked out for the wedding date we wanted. Rhian of Celebration Events happened to call us on our way out to find out how we'd gotten on and suggested we visited her at a wedding set up on our way back home. Sometimes the ones you would never have thought of for yourselves turn out to be the obvious choice - let's be honest there are so many hidden gems in North Wales.

If there is enough interest then I may consider profiling North Wales Wedding Venues in a new feature, if you work at a Hotel or any other wedding Reception Venue and you think you'd like to be considered just drop me an e-mail.

I hope you all have a great week.

Gemma xx