What to Ask a Wedding Venue Before You Sign

The venue is usually the first big decision, and it quietly makes most of the ones after it. It sets your date, caps your guest list, decides whether you need a rain plan, and in many cases decides who caters, who pours, and what time the music stops.

That is a lot of leverage for a decision made on a forty-minute tour where the light is beautiful and someone is being very charming at you. Take this list with you.

What is actually included

Ask them to walk you through the base figure line by line. What you are trying to separate is rental from everything else:

• Tables, chairs, linens, glassware, flatware — included, or rented?
• Setup and breakdown labour?
• On-site coordination — is that a person who runs your day, or a person who runs the building?
• Sound system, projector, microphones?
• Heating, cooling, generators, lighting after dark?
• Cleaning, and any damage deposit?

"Included" is doing enormous work in venue marketing. Make them say what it means.

What is mandatory

This is where the number moves most.

• Is there an exclusive caterer, or an approved list, or a fee to bring your own?
• Is bar service in-house? Can you supply your own alcohol, and is there a corkage charge?
• Is there a required minimum spend on food and beverage — and does it count tax and service charge, or is it a pure food-and-drink floor?
• Are there required vendors for anything else: security, valet, cleaning, insurance?
• Do outside vendors need to be licensed and insured with the venue named on the certificate?

An approved-vendor list is not automatically bad. It is very often the venue protecting itself from people who have flooded a floor once already. But it changes your options, and you want to know before you fall in love.

The real capacity

Every venue has a headline capacity, and it is almost always the standing-room number. Ask for the seated number with everything you actually want in the room: a dance floor, a band or DJ setup, a head table, a cake table, a bar, and a path for servers.

Then ask what happens at the transition — if the ceremony and the reception are in the same room, who flips it, how long does it take, and where do your guests go for that half hour?

Time

• What time can vendors access the space? Photographers, florists and bands all need different amounts of lead time.
• What time must everything be out? Overnight storage, or a 1am strike?
• What is the noise ordinance, and when does amplified music have to stop?
• What does an extra hour cost, and who is authorised to buy one on the night?

A venue that closes hard at 10pm is a different wedding from one that closes at 1am, regardless of what the two contracts cost.

Weather, and the plan B

If any part of your day is outdoors, ask: what is the rain plan, when is the decision made, who makes it, and does moving indoors cost anything? Then ask to see the rain plan space. Standing in it in the rain is the only honest way to evaluate it.

The money questions

• What is the deposit, and what portion of it is ever refundable?
• What is the payment schedule?
• Is the service charge a gratuity that reaches staff, or an administrative fee? These are different, and both may apply.
• Is tax charged on the service charge?
• What is the cancellation policy, and the postponement policy, and are they different?
• If the venue changes hands or closes, what happens to your date and your money?

Ask for a sample contract before you are asked for a deposit. Any venue that will not send one before payment has told you something.

What to ask that is not on the tour script

"What do couples get wrong here?" Every venue has an answer — the room gets cold after sunset, the aisle photographs badly at 5pm, the parking is a walk in heels, the kitchen needs an extra thirty minutes. Ask, and write it down.

"What weddings do not work here?" A venue that can name a wedding it is wrong for is a venue telling you the truth about the one it is right for.

Venue pages on United Vows show who is listed in each market with the starting price they have published — venues in Denver and venues in Miami, for instance. When you are ready to hold the whole plan in one place, the free planning checklist sequences the decisions that come after this one.