How to Choose Your Wedding Venue

Your venue sets the tone for everything else: the date you can have, the number of guests, the style of the day, and a hefty slice of the budget. Get it right and most other decisions fall into place naturally. So it's worth slowing down here, even when you're itching to book somewhere and tick the big one off the list.

Sort the money first

Before you visit anywhere, know roughly what you can spend on the venue. It's the biggest single cost in most weddings, and falling for somewhere £6,000 over budget makes everything afterwards a compromise.

According to Bridebook, venue hire typically eats up around a third of the total wedding budget, with the average UK wedding landing somewhere north of £20,000. Hire alone, before food and drink, often runs from £3,000 to £10,000 depending on the type of place and where it is. London and the Cotswolds command a premium; a village hall or a community space costs a fraction of that.

Watch the difference between "dry hire" and a packaged price. Dry hire gives you the room and not much else, which can be cheaper on paper but means hiring caterers, furniture, crockery and sometimes loos. A package looks dearer but often works out similar once you've added everything in. Compare like for like.

Match the venue to the day you actually want

Picture the day in your head. A loud, late, dance-until-2am party suits a very different venue from a long lazy lunch in a garden. Before you book viewings, get clear on a few things:

• Guest numbers. A venue that's perfect for 60 feels empty with 150, and cramped the other way round. Have a rough headcount before you look.
• Indoors, outdoors or both. This is Britain. If you want an outdoor ceremony, you need a genuinely good wet-weather backup, not a marquee that floods.
• Ceremony and reception together or apart. One venue for both is simpler for guests and cheaper on transport. Two means a church or registry office plus travel to plan.

The type of venue shapes a lot of this. Here's a rough guide:

Ask the awkward questions on the viewing

A viewing is where you find out what the brochure leaves out. Be the couple who asks the dull questions, because the dull questions are where the money and the headaches hide.

Things genuinely worth asking:

• What's the all-in price for our date and numbers, with everything included?
• Is there a minimum spend, and does it change by day or season?
• Can we use our own caterers and suppliers, or is there an approved list (and a fee to go off it)?
• What time does music have to stop, and is there a noise limit?
• How many weddings do you hold a day? Back-to-back bookings can mean a rushed setup.
• What's the access time for suppliers to set up, and when must we clear out?
• What happens to our deposit if we have to move the date?

That last one stopped being theoretical for a lot of couples in recent years. Read the cancellation and postponement terms properly before you sign anything.

Visit at the right time, more than once

If you can, see the venue at roughly the time of year and time of day you'll marry. A garden that's glorious in June can be a mudbath in February, and a room that's flooded with afternoon light might be gloomy for an evening do. Light changes everything in photos.

Try to walk the route your guests will take, from the car park to the ceremony to the bar. Notice the things they'll notice: parking, step-free access, where older relatives will sit, whether the loos are a trek. A venue can be beautiful and still be a faff to actually attend.

Trust the feeling, then check the facts

There's usually a moment on a viewing where you just know. That instinct is worth listening to. But sleep on it before you put down a deposit, and make sure the practical boxes are ticked: budget, capacity, date availability and a fair contract. A venue you love that bankrupts the rest of the budget isn't the right venue.

Once you've booked, the venue address, parking notes and timings become the details guests ask about most. A wedding website is the easiest place to keep all of that in one spot, and tools like Build The Day let you share directions, accommodation nearby and the day's running order without fielding the same question fifty times by text.

Take your time with this one. Everything else is easier once the where and the when are settled.