Monday, May 11, 2009

Wedding Location Questions

This weekend Ms. Temple of Groom and I will visit our first potential wedding venue. That's pretty exciting! I think the location looks great, but I seriously don't want to get my hopes up. There's gotta be a deal breaker we've yet to discover! How could we have missed the giant painted swastika on the front of the building?! Damn it.

Anyway, I'll tell you the location after we put in the deposit because I don't want to jinx everything before we even see it! Even if we hate it, at least we'll have fun taking our newly immune pup on a mini road trip (Ernie gets his last shot on Wednesday!).

So I want to head to the location looking like a pro. Therefore, I need everyone's help! What do I need to know when location shopping? What are some good questions to ask? What were some mistakes you made when you venue shopped? What do you wish you had asked? What did you ask that saved the day? I obviously know to take a million pictures, but what else am I missing? I don't want to get in the car and head home wishing we had looked at something we missed.

6 comments:

  1. I would chug a couple 40's before you get there and see if the bathrooms are still easy to find.

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  2. One thing you should always ask is if they (the location) have correspondence with the wedding planner beforehand. (Or wedding coordinator as it may be...)

    There are some places that were awesome locations, but it they all were kind of a "we unlock the place and you use it" sort of vibe. I had a friend who had serious problems when some issues came up, including power sources for the band, lighting issues, and equipment loading problems. Uou need to have someone there who can answer questions regarding all of that stuff, or at least communicate everything fully to the coordinator.

    The location for my wedding was very pricey, but they had someone work as essentially a second coordinator, making sure everything was exactly as it should be.

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  3. By the way, I typed that hastily at work and now realize it looks like it was written by a drunk orangutan.

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  4. Just approach it like a production location. What would you need to make a film there?

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  5. make sure you ask if you get the venue the whole day or if there is someone having a ceremony before and u get it from 3-midnight or something like this. at the place i am getting married i think another couple is getting married in the morning making it impossible for us to do a rehearsal that morning!

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  6. What the venue does not provide that you have to bring in? For example, I manage a house that does weddings in Malibu. We have a base house for the price but parking, shuttles, even bathrooms have to be brought in (Malibu is on a septic so you can image what 500 guests would do to that..) Anyway I'm straight forward but I can't tell you the number of people who have been amazed to hear that..even after veiwing numerous sites in Malibu.

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