How to save 50% of your wedding budget by booking your venue online

To choose the perfect ceremony and reception location for you, you need to first know what’s out there. Then find the venues that have the experience and dive into the details

Check what’s out there

Now that you’ve begun researching, you probably have a few favourite wedding experiences already. Something like a dream wedding on the beach or a magical cliff-top garden ceremony overlooking the ocean.

However before setting your heart on one particular experience, it’s always best to first open yourself up to the large range of unique experiences and venues out there. You’ll be amazed at what’s in your reach and affordable, so take your time and have a good look around before deciding.

Beach wedding was what we were trying to book. But clifftop beach wedding is what we went for. Check out our wedding video here

Find venues that can do it

Once you’ve decided on the experience, next you need to find which venues does it the way you like by getting into the details of their individual wedding locations. You need to be able to visualise how your wedding might be there, as well as sorting out the practical aspects like party end times, maximum capacity, surcharges or extra requirements.

Check the venue’s minimum wedding requirements

Overall a wedding is like an extra-curricular activity a venue can embark on in addition to the normal services which is primarily providing accommodation. It’s a lot of extra work on top of their normal operations and can inconvenience other guests staying at the hotel, which is their main business.

Thus venues have come up with different ways to make offering weddings worthwhile for them. Some venues have a minimum room night requirement depending on the size of the wedding, where they expect some of your guests to be staying there too.

Some venues have a surcharge or minimum spend on food and beverages when offering their signature locations and restaurants. These locations may be popular with in-house guests and the public so they need to make sure they don’t lose out by having your wedding there.

However if you are happy to forgo a bit of privacy and share the location, you may save yourself from some of these requirements. Another common way venues tackle weddings, is by having different wedding packages for every wedding location they have with a limit on the guests included.

Make sure you’re happy with the privacy

Checking how private a wedding location is without going there is one of the more challenging tasks, as privacy means different things to different people. One things for sure though, what a venue contact may see as private may not be what you consider is private.

So the first thing is to consider what type of resort it is with the number of rooms and type of clientele. Some luxury boutique resorts are focused on couples and honeymooners and only have 30 rooms, where most guests tend to stay in their own private villas. This may mean all public areas are pretty much empty throughout the day for you, compared to a family resort with 200 rooms and packed guest facilities.

Secondly, get a general understanding of where all your wedding locations are in proximity to each other and main guest facilities (main swimming pool, main restaurants etc.). This will help you avoid awkward situations like taking your vows next to main guest pool with screaming kids and bikini-clad outsiders taking pics of both you and your guests.

Next make sure you take into account where the resort itself is located. If your venue is located on the most popular public beach in town, it will most likely be bustling with tourists and a beach wedding may not be appropriate. If this is not your thing, pick a more secluded place where some resorts even have a “private-access” beach.

Finally if you still need a little more, the best thing is to speak to a professional who has been there and independently assessed the place. This is often the best, they can tell you how it really is and if it would meet your requirements. We offer this to our Relaxed Brides, where we have visited and carefully assessed our venues. One of our key members in the team Michelle, who does the venue assessments is actually an architect, so we get lots of insight into each venue.

There’s an easy way

The fastest way to do this is to visit in person and ask lots of questions, but we know that most people can’t do this. This is why we created the website to give you the next best thing. Here you can visit venues online and find out having all the key practical aspects there as well.

1. Check out venues based on the experience offered

2. Get an overview on the venue overall, with any mandatory wedding requirements from the venue in the notes.

3. Check all available venue maps to understand where everything is.

4. To quickly check a venue’s top 3 wedding locations and curfews, see Visit IT

Some questions from clients to help you on your way

I have some elderly and less mobile guests coming to my wedding. How can I tell which wedding locations are best for them?

This is basically a question about logistics between lobby, ceremony, cocktail and reception locations which you should consider even if guest mobility wasn’t an issue. A few key questions to the venue will really help you to work this out.First start by checking out their venue map to see where all your wedding locations are. Then ask the venue based on the modes of transport. With walking, check how long it takes to walk from location to location, if there are any stairs and how dimly lit it is in the evening.If walking is not a good option, many venues may also have golf buggies they use to cart guests around, especially venues on hilly terrain. Some wedding locations may have direct buggy access and your elderly guests can be taken from doorstep to doorstep.Otherwise if this is not available, you may be able to ask if they have a staff-only access which staff use to work in the background. They probably don’t like to tell people about it since it’s not designed for guest to be nor the prettiest of areas, however they may allow you to use it if you are really worried and ask very nicely.

How do I organise an after party? What extra requirements are there? Why do most venues ask for music to be turned down at 10pm? What can I do?

During any wedding event, one of the biggest priorities for the venue is to minimise the impact of your wedding experience on other in-house guests and vice versa. Other in-house guests have also paid to be there and should be able to get their full experience too, especially a simple rejuvenating and restful sleep.This is why after parties can be a contentious issue. Many venues straight out do not allow after parties at all and require music to be turned off or down before 10pm because it can irritate other guests. These complaints can result in a venue losing their regular clients and even giving refunds, so there is a definite impact.However once you understand this, it’s easier to get creative and find a win-win solution together. Negotiation, compromise and flexibility will most likely be required depending on the venue.So to start, the first and easiest way is to choose a wedding location that has a later finish time. Different wedding locations in a venue may have different finish times (i.e. sound curfews). If these locations are not ideal for the dinner reception too, sometimes you may be able to move your after party there once dinner’s over. Some of our venues have indoor options like restaurants, ballrooms and a few even have night clubs.

Secondly, you make want to see if you can see book out all the rooms around a certain area of the venue, so that noise restrictions will no longer apply there. This is actually what we recommend for an awesome party, where your guests can easily choose to go back and rest, change and come back for more. Before the party, you can hang and spend more time together reconnecting, eating together etc.

If that doesn’t work, you may need to get creative and compromise. For one of our Relaxed Brides, the couple wanted an outdoor party on the beach and live music all night. However we worked out that the drums would reverberate through the venue, so agreed to switch it to just an acoustic session after 10pm with the speakers facing out to the water.

As a final note, for all after parties you will probably need to purchase a drinks package and pay some extra surcharges. This is primarily for the venue’s staff to stay and serve both you and your guests, as they would have otherwise finished up for the day.

I’ve now found my favourite wedding venue, however am worried that it might not fit all my guests. So how do I choose a wedding location if I’m not sure about the guest numbers?

In our experience with overseas weddings, most couples will only have their final guest numbers a month before their wedding. Some guests who said they were coming will cancel closer to the date, and others that are not sure may be able to come in the end.So one tip we give our Relaxed Brides is that, generally 50% of the total number of guests you invite will actually come. So it’s good to start planning with this number. Next check out the capacity of all the wedding locations to know where this will stand. It’s also important to note that capacity may be flexible, depending on the location. Sometimes venue sets the capacity based on fire and safety regulations which is a hard limit, and some set it based on how much space would be most comfortable (e.g. leaving space for a dance floor). So check with your venues to make sure.And finally depending on your wedding date and the likelihood of rain, make sure you know and are comfortable with the capacity of the backup locations. This is especially important if you are having a wedding during low season where bad weather may be more likely.Otherwise just invite less guests and keep your numbers down. Weddings that are more intimate and celebrated with only your closest friends and family tend to be more personal and leave stronger bonds and lasting memories. This is what we are all about, and it will even help keep your costs down. A win for all!