Aside from picking the person with whom you are going to spend the rest of your life, picking the wedding venue is the most important decision you will make during the wedding planning process. Your choice of venue will influence and often determine your wedding day attire, the attire of your guests, your budget, design and vendor options. In making such an important decision, you should explore all of your venue choices (not just that hotel ballroom where your cousin, best friend, and accountant got married). And luckily, there are many options that didn’t exist five, ten years ago that include private estates, downtown lofts, museums, rooftops and gardens…the list is endless.
When visiting and exploring your different venue options, remember that your wedding day should be a reflection of who you both are as individuals and as a couple. Thus, your venue should also be a reflection of you – it should feel like you. When you envision your friends and family watching your ceremony, enjoying a cocktail and an hors d’oeuvres, and dancing the night away, are they in a ballroom, a downtown loft, a rustic farmhouse, a country estate or an open field?
When selecting an untraditional “found” space to host your wedding, it’s important to know that, unlike a hotel ballroom which is already “event ready,” a found space can be a quite bit more work and often substantially more expensive, however it can also make for the most unique, memorable, surprising and customized experience possible, perfectly honoring who you are as a couple and what makes your union special.
If I had to do it all over again with my awesome husband, these are some of the different spaces we might consider, each as different as the next…
Grand Palais, Paris
Gallery of Diana, The Reggia, La Venaria Reale
The Pabst Theater, Wisconsin
Murou Art Forest by Dani Karavan
The LA River Bed
Henzen Cave Hotel, Cappadocia, Turkey
Astley Castle near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England
