How quickly did you book your reception?

bananasplit472001 · May 2014

How quickly did all of you book your reception and ceremony space? I see that people get engaged and 3 days later have their wedding booked already! How do people do that? I took me 7 months just to find my ceremony space and book and 9 months to book my reception space. I am so interested in how someone can be engaged one day and have an entire guest list and venue booked!

flyingfoxes · May 2014

I knew the weekend we got engaged where I wanted to get married after we Googled around for wineries. I had to wait until FI got back from deployment so he could go in-person with me to tour it before we booked it, otherwise I would have happily booked it immediately, lol.

bananasplit472001 · May 2014

april182015bride said:

I knew the weekend we got engaged where I wanted to get married after we Googled around for wineries. I had to wait until FI got back from deployment so he could go in-person with me to tour it before we booked it, otherwise I would have happily booked it immediately, lol.

Thats wonderful you knew so quickly. I wanted a winery too but unfortunately my guest list was not large enough to meet the minimums. Which was my biggest problem when searching. We just have small family's then the rest were friends.

manateehugger · May 2014

Ceremony is at our church, so that was easy and a given.

Reception, I think we officially booked about 7 months after being engaged (granted, we still booked it more than a year out).

emmyg65 · May 2014

Our secret: we started planning our wedding before we got "officially" engaged. The actual proposal was more of an afterthought. So we knew pretty much exactly what we wanted and hit the ground running.

Another thing that made it easier was once we made a decision, we stuck with it. No second guessing.

tcnoble · May 2014

We live in and are getting married in Vegas. It made it easy when most hotel spaces were too small, and several properties were just too expensive. We knew we wanted to do everything at one spot, so that helped narrow it down. We had our space selected and reserved less than a month after we got engaged - we knew it was what we wanted and didn't want to risk it getting booked for our date. That was the easiest part of planning so we got it out of the way quickly.

theartistformerlyknownas · May 2014

No second guessing. FI always wanted to get married at his grandpa's club, and we wanted to lock it down before the holiday proposals started flooding in (we got engaged Dec 14) so we moved quickly. We knew with our large families we'd have between 250-300 people, had $x in savings and could save another $y by fall. I started emailing with the banquet director at the club the week after we got engaged and he had a Saturday available in September that was acceptable to us, so we made an appointment to visit the following week, confirmed that the capacity and cost were in line with what we needed, and pulled the trigger. Put down the deposit that day and never looked at a second place.

beachyone15 · May 2014

It took us a few weeks. We visited a few venues together (probably about 6) and picked the one we liked best and could afford.

ElcaB · May 2014

It took me about six months because we had trouble finding a venue that met our requirements.

Maggie0829 · May 2014

We got engaged in June and had our reception space booked in late July/early August. We only looked at two places. The one was just too fancy and the other was what we booked. Now I had looked at 50 or so places online and checked out prices, etc. But when it came to booking venues and vendors we really didn't look at lot in person because if I liked something and it was a good price then I just booked it.

tammym1001 · May 2014

We had our original venue booked about a month after we got engaged. About 4 months after that our plans changed and we ended up not doing a DW. After we decided not to do a DW I had our venue booked within a few weeks.

dolewhipper · May 2014

My pastor is only at one church, so that part was easy. For Reception, I looked at a few venues within a 15 minute radius and then narrowed it down to budget and I had my answer.

atlastmrsg · May 2014

Was proposed to on Dec. 31, 2012. Booked ceremony and reception venue (all in one spot) in March of 2013 for May of 2014. Worked out well because it's a very in-demand estate venue, and then I had time to pay for it and everything else over one year and five months.

cupcait927 · May 2014

bananasplit472001 said:

april182015bride said:

I knew the weekend we got engaged where I wanted to get married after we Googled around for wineries. I had to wait until FI got back from deployment so he could go in-person with me to tour it before we booked it, otherwise I would have happily booked it immediately, lol.

Thats wonderful you knew so quickly. I wanted a winery too but unfortunately my guest list was not large enough to meet the minimums. Which was my biggest problem when searching. We just have small family's then the rest were friends.

It took us about three months. We wanted a winery as well and I kept getting discouraged because I was having the same problem as well - our guest list was FAR below the minimums. Luckily we were able to find a smaller winery that has its own restaurant and specifically caters to smaller weddings (<100). Plus they are a sister winery to one of the bigger ones that we love so we get to have their wine as well at our reception.

ashleyep · May 2014

We checked out venues a month after getting engaged.I had done a lot of internet/email research, put all of the prices in a spreadsheet and settled on 3 venues to visit in one day. We picked which one we liked, and after finding out available dates and cross checking available dates with the church, we booked it a week or two later. So 6 weeks maybe?

kittytango · May 2014

My fiance and I were engaged late November and had out ceremony/reception space booked by mid-January. Looking back, I guess it was pretty fast? When we started looking before Christmas, we realized that the venues which were BOTH affordable and desirable were already almost booked up a year and a half in advance of the season we wanted to get married. What ended up being our runner-up venue only had one date left in June 2015 so it really got us moving through our list of showings. Our last site visit was to the American Swedish Historic Museum beginning of January and we absolutely fell in love- it had nearly everything on our crazy list (unique, historic, waterfront, park setting, outdoor space, within 30 minutes of Center City) so we were signing contracts within a couple of weeks. We totally lucked out, too, since it's in the process of being upgraded by Jeffrey Miller and prices are still super reasonable

JennyColada · May 2014

My Fi always knew that he wanted to get married at the restaurant that we're using, and I didn't have strong emotional ties to anywhere else. He did humor me a bit with me "what about here?!" texts, but we always knew that I'd agree with his idea.

I don't remember how long it was before we actually started talking to anyone and making plans. I think 3 weeks?

CMGragain · May 2014

We paid for daughter's wedding. We live 2000 miles away. We already discussed on the phone what kind of reception we wanted. I did a lot of internet research, which eliminated a lot of places. I flew to Maryland for four days, and we spent all our time dress shopping and venue shopping. When we found a place that could work within our budget and specifics, we pounced. Mission accomplished!

climbingsingle · May 2014

We got engaged September 4th and had picked out our venue on Sept 28th. We only visited one place - we fell in love with it. We're having our ceremony and reception there.

SmileDamnit · May 2014

We're having a pretty short (6 month) engagement so we had to knock it out pretty quickly, especially since we are getting married in a location & at a time where tourist season will be in it's prime. We took a vacation to the lake last summer and found a restaurant we loved and new right away that's where we'd have the reception dinner so we jumped on that within a week of engagement. It took a few weeks to find the house we wanted to rent - finding someone willing to rent their property for a wedding (albeit a small one) was difficult, and we were also picky about finding something with a gorgeous lakefront view that was also large enough inside incase of bad weather. It think when it was all said and done, it took us about a month to get everything secured.

Lawmom09 · May 2014

We got engaged at the end of January and I really had no intention of booking a venue anytime soon. We decided on a budget and a month to get married and started looking at venues online. We loved one place in particular and I called in March 2014 out of sheer curiosity regarding pricing. I was floored when she told me they were completely booked for June dates in 2015. So we knew we needed to get started ASAP. We narrowed it down o 4 places online and FI went to look at all the venues (we are planning a St. Louis wedding from Houston) he choose the one that suited us best. We had our deposit to them and contract signed by May 1st.

ahyatt87 · May 2014

FI and I got engaged in May 2012. We had been planning on getting married this June since December 2011 because we could keep our dating anniversary date. After we got engaged, we relocated because I was starting graduate school. I believe that as of July 2012 we had made an extensive list of potential venues, and as of September 2012 we contacted our top contenders for quotes. Based on that, we made appointments to visit our top few venues. Then we talked about it and booked our venue in December 2012. We definitively did not rush, but our top choice venue was already booked on the date we wanted as of October 2012. That being said, we are super happy with the venue we did choose.

huskypuppy14 · May 2014

I got engaged July first, and decided on a venue by the end of July. We started looking at venues the weekend after we got engaged. We knew we wanted to get married preferably June of this year. So we wanted to start looking immediately.

MandyMost · May 2014

About a week after getting engaged we started talking about some logistics.

We first made a guest list so we had an idea of the number,
we talked about timing that would work with our lives (i.e. after he's done with school...although that was a large factor in determining when we got engaged anyway),
and we figured out a reasonable budget (i.e. how much money we thought we could save up until that estimated timing of the wedding).
Then we asked our VIPs if they had any weekends that they just couldn't do within the ~3 month time frame we were thinking about.
Then we talked about the kind of wedding we were envisioning--outside or inside, day or evening, casual or formal, in the city or the country, etc.
Finally, we talked about our big pet peeves--like we wanted to make sure everyone was truly in one big open room during the reception (we had recently been to a wedding where we couldn't see anything). And I wanted enough space that people could walk between the tables with ease.

That all just took us sitting down together for a couple hours, essentially. Then over the next few weeks I started researching venues and setting up appointments. The visiting took about a month. We ended up seeing over 5 places, two of them would have worked for us, and one was just a clear winner for me. He was fine with either of the two. We double-checked the date we liked that was available with our VIPs and booked!

So it essentially took us under 2 months from engagement to having a date and a venue.

Alikat9614 · May 2014

We are getting married on FI's hometown and wanted an indoor reception space. There are two large-ish venues that fit the bill. He is a videographer and had previously filmed at both spaces, so he knew which one he preferred. He proposed October 2, and on the drive 2 hour drive home we drew up a preliminary guest list, with room for family members we knew we'd forget. The venue's capacity is 150, so we kept it at 150 including ourselves. We had 2 dates in September of 2014 to choose from because of our work schedules and once we cleared those with our VIPs, we booked the reception venue and put the deposit on the church. We had our venue contract October 10. I guess that makes it really fast, but it never felt rushed. Things just seemed to fall in to place

serena569 · May 2014

We were limited venues by the sheer size of our families and our desire for a casual wedding. There were only 2 places we had to book quickly to get a summer date. And our date was by their availability.

How quickly did you book your reception?

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