How do you choose your venue?!

[DeborahCA]

We have made the life changing decision to build a wedding venue in the heart of the Devon countryside! I'm looking for help to try and make sure that our limited marketing budget is spent well. I'm sure most couples now search online first - but which websites - there are so many out there! I would love to hear about which ones are currently the 'go-to' sites for finding your perfect wedding venue. Thank you for your help.

I found my venue on ‘hitched’. Didn’t have a clue what we wanted so just searched for anything within a certain area (Surrey and surrounding counties). Ended up choosing Millbridge Court in hampshire. I love the country homely feel of it.

Thanks - that was one I thought came up a lot! D

I'm struggling to find somewhere that has enough rooms for lots of guests to stay overnight and all eat breakfast together in the morning.

I'd get your SEO sorted as well as making sure you're on other people's websites. I googled and googled in vain to find the right venue then ended up picking somewhere I'd only found out about through word of mouth because their website was so awful and didn't show up on any Google searches. Though I should add I paid about £300 for my venue so I'm probably not in the budget range you're aiming at

Mine was recommended from a friend who had worked there!!!

IMO something that would really sell it would be somewhere which caters for the ceremony, reception and overnight accommodation.

What market are you going for
The adult only wedding .
Ones with kids.
How many people
How long are you going to be open for wedding.
The tread mill affect how going to tommorrow wedding seeing today's.

Have you worked at wedding venue so you know what you and don't want .

I originally wanted a big church wedding. But due to circumstances we couldn't. We had not a penny saved, we got married on the day we'd been together for 11 months. We were engaged for 3 months, planned the wedding in 2, and had a baby on the way. So we got married in the registry office.

Oh yes as a PP said, a lot of exclusive use venues don’t have accommodation which was important for us. So the one we chose has a honeymoon lodge separate from the venue (across the garden) and 7 double rooms which can also had Z beds put up for children. There is also a breakfast room. This is a fab idea.

If you adopt a no corkage policy and don't tie people in to doing things they don't want to do (such as use your exclusive caterers) then you will not struggle to get bookings.

(We found a gorgeous place online simply by googling for no corkage venues in Hampshire because we wanted to bring our own booze and not pay something ridiculous like 15 quid a bottle to be able to open wine we had already bought. Unfortunately we ended up ditching them when we realised they'd make up the difference and then some by including all kinds of hidden costs elsewhere.)

I am aware our requirements are rather bespoke, but our requirements were:
Ability to land helicopters
Secure parking for cars
Private location - no ability for press photographers to get near
Satisfied security services for ability to secure location and perform extraction if necessary.
Accommodation that was exclusive use
Assurance from the venue that their staff would be discrete both in not discussing our guests, but also requesting autographs

We are very ordinary, but my DFs job means that a large number of his friends are not.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions! I am fortunate to be in the position of having worked as a Registrar for the last 6 years, so I have a pretty good idea of what couples are looking for and what works/doesn't work!

I often hear of people who have been expected to use the venue's own services and caterers, and we hope to break this pattern by offering a DIY space where couples can bring their own ideas and create a completely individual event. We will be offering single day or whole weekend hire to allow time to decorate, have breakfast together the day after etc, and certainly have space to land a helicopter!

Sadly, no accommodation currently other than camping - which is certainly available, and we hope to add on camping pods/lodges in the future. However, we need to take things one step at a time!

We also agree with no corkage. Our couples will not be expected to pay corkage on table wine, welcome drinks or drinks for the toast but we have decided to run the bar ourselves, purely for practical reasons (not muddling up our own and hired glasses etc).

I currently plan to market mainly through social media and website listings - hence my request for the most popular ones to target - and we have a great website up and running!

Thanks again

D

Well good luck .
Camping or caravan or moterhome could work .
But don't forget toilet shower block . If people are coming for wedding tgey need to look their very best .
And electric hook up
Maybe set the camp site up 1st then the wedding / party venue. Later .

Regarding accommodation, I have no idea about the price or logistics, but have you looked into yurts / glamping style accommodation?

Hitched

I had a venue in mind but Hitched and the local magazines/brochures you get at wedding fairs have been the only things I've looked at just because I'm excited.
Do lots of lovely photo shoots ( quirky, traditional, trendy) and get them in those magazines, Facebook and Hitchec.

Definitely look at getting glamping units!! . I personally wanted somewhere different and ended up searching on Google over and over again. Our venue wasn't on any of the common websites and that's exactly what I loved!

Just think of all your key words and make sure they come up well on search returns, if you'd been my venue, I'd have been looking for things like

Devon wedding venue
Xx town wedding venue
Rural wedding venues in Devon
Country wedding
Barn wedding reception

We saw a sign on the free way pointing to a very distinctive venue, googled it and choose it because it was the cheapest in town

We googled what we wanted and CREAR weddings came up. They do something very similar. They have a large venue and a cottage for elopes or extra guests.

My husband has an online wedding directory business, we are based in Scotland though but he has different ranges of packages for listings which have different aspects ie. being in the first page of listings, special fb adverts. He has an app also which a lot of directories don't have yet and I think if you are looking to advertise online then that's definitely something you should look for. My husband used to go to a lot of wedding fayres but they really cost a lot to attend but I think they are good for venues to go to. His business focusses on online social media advertising and he has things set up to automatically post across different social media at different times of the day so literally you see his posts all the time, he has fb groups for couples and suppliers and keeps an eye on all the different groups so as a venue you will probably want the same set up with private groups for brides/suppliers etc. To advertise in print media can be very very expensive as in the price for 1 month in print is the same as a year online it's just crazy!! Anyway my point is it's all down to social media presence and getting the name out there. Good luck!

Thanks for your ideas. Think you're right, an online and social media presence is key to our marketing strategy, hence me asking which of the many 'wedding' type websites out there most people are looking at. It's always going to be a balancing act between how much to pay out for listings and how much return business you get from them, but no doubt marketing has always been that way!

Confetti.co.uk

I am currently searching for the perfect venue and had no idea how difficult it would be to match budget, dates, decor and areA.

The thing that makes me click off the venue immediately is if the pricing is not clear. I want to know BEFORE i view if I can afford it without having to email every bloody venue first.

Also being responsive to enquiries, I have emailed a few who either have not come back to me at all or take days to do so. It puts me off completely.

I started looking at the various wedding websites (Hitched etc) but to be honest I found them overwhelming and actually found our local council website much more helpful. They have a list of all the licensed venues in our city which was much easier to navigate and meant I found what we wanted really easily.