Six Important Tips to Know Before Booking a Wedding Venue

Six important tips to know before booking a wedding venue.  I started planning private estate weddings and special events about 15 years ago.  There are a lot of moving parts when planning  your dream wedding or special event at a private estate. Whether it is your own home or you decide to rent someone’s property, please read these tips to make sure that this is the right option for you.

1. Make sure that your budget and guest count are in place before you start looking at private homes for your wedding. If you are on a strict budget, please reconsider having a private estate wedding.  We recommend not spending more than 20% of your overall budget on the venue, since everything must be brought onsite. Overall costs can be 35-40% higher.
2. How late do you want your party to go until?   The end-time for amplified music at most homes is usually 10 pm.  Some homeowners have neighbors far away and that can give you an advantage and some homeowners have ballrooms.  Ballrooms can help with going later in the evening, however, these types of properties are usually more expensive to rent.   Please make sure that your DJ and/or band understand that they cannot play as loud as they want (the bass and drums are usually what cause the most challenges) and expect no one to complain. We did one event for a really cool NFL player, but his DJ had the bass cranked so high that the house was vibrating with the homeowner sitting inside.  The DJ would not adjust the bass until the Sheriffs showed up, then he got with the program.
3. There are a lot of moving parts (details) when planning an off-site event.  Normally, clients must bring in a kitchen setup and catering or a food truck (we love doing a food truck with wait staff and hedging off the truck – this saves a lot of money), rental bathrooms, lighting, possible shuttle for guests, tables, chairs, linens, napkins, flatware, glassware, bars, beverages, entertainment and decor to name some of the logistics.  If you are super busy and don’t like dealing with questions, then this might not be the right choice for you.  Even if you have a great event planner, we need our clients to answer questions in a reasonable time frame, so we may move the planning forward.
4. Have a weather contingency plan in place, so if the weather turns cold or rain is in the forecast, your vendors know what to do and there are no financial surprises.
5. If your event is going to be outside, don’t forget to have Citronella candles near the food (sweets and proteins) to help keep bugs away.  Hiring an experienced planner, who has produced events at private estates will have the experience to be ready with challenges that come-up.
6. Catering generally arrive 3 hours or more before guest arrival. A few caterers will try and cut costs with labor and show-up 1.5 hours before guest arrival – this is not the norm.  When you receive a proposal from a caterer, carefully review the amount of staff that they have for your event, as well as their arrival time.  Once we did an event and the caterer showed up 1.5 hours before the guest arrival.  They had a small staff for 150 guests – definitely less than 10 persons.  When you see this please realize that other vendors will be impacted by their lack of staff and the food service may be slow or there may be one long line for the bar during cocktail hour.  It is very important that there is enough staff, especially if there is a ceremony to dinner flip (using the same area for the ceremony and dinner).  If this is the case, most of the catering staff will be doing the flip and your guests could feel the impact during the cocktail hour. As an event planner, we are there to make sure that table counts and placements are correct, place your items on the tables (table numbers, place cards, menus and party favors),plus make sure to handle situations that come up during the event.  Our location agreements now require that caterers arrive three hours before the guests, unless it is a food truck, then we require 2.5 hours.

For more information about our company or if you would like to view additional properties, please go to our website at https://giannaandcompany.com 

Wishing you a great day. XO, Gianna