Selecting a Destination Wedding Venue from a Designer’s Perspective
Are you planning a destination wedding in 2022? Or perhaps 2023? If so, pull up a seat and settle in for a moment. Let’s chat venue selection and how to kickstart the process. I’m going to tackle this from a slightly different angle than you might expect, because I’m not just thinking about this from a destination wedding planner’s perspective… I’m thinking about it from my standpoint as a destination wedding designer. If you’re choosing to invite your guests to a beautiful destination, and asking them to spend precious vacation time celebrating you, your marriage, and spending an extended weekend in a faraway location, the experience really does need to be exceptional, and part of that means that it should be exceptionally beautiful.
When our clients hire us to plan, design, and produce their wedding, sometimes that means they’ve already selected a destination and/or a wedding venue. Sometimes it means we have a known destination but need to find the perfect venue, and sometimes it means we’re exploring a variety of possible destinations and need to hone in on options in multiple different locations to facilitate the decision-making process and venue selection. No matter what – my criteria for venue scouting begins with the following:
1. Does the venue offer a true experience unique to the destination?
Simply put, we want to ensure that the location of your ceremony and reception are cohesive elements in a broader destination experience. If you bring your guests to a beautiful island or costal town and then host every single event inside a windowless hotel ballroom, you might as well have chosen the local conference center for your wedding. That may sound harsh, but I promise it’s what your guests will think at one point or another.
If you bring your guests to Italy, it’s a fair bet they’re expecting incredible Italian food and wine. If you opt for Lake Tahoe, the lake itself really needs to be a part of the experience.
We’re always considering the view, the cuisine, and the service experience because all of those should be an extension of the destination you’ve chosen. If you’re celebrating in the mountains, it’s a worthwhile goal to hunt for a venue with a view. Perhaps it’s the approach and arrival experience, if not an interior space itself. Or perhaps it’s the 360 views from the tent installation that goes up outdoors and the fresh mountain air your guests can breathe all night. Perhaps it’s as simple as finding a spot with an outdoor terrace for cocktail hour, a seaside spot for the ceremony, or a loft with a 360 degree view of the incredible city skyline and its famous sunset. You get the picture.
2. Is there natural light?
Your photography and cinematography teams will thank you profusely if you give them the benefit of capturing your wedding in a space that has natural light. I can’t emphasize this enough. Natural light works wonders, not only for facilitating the best documentation of your wedding, but also in creating an environment that feels fresh, comfortable, and elegant. As the sun sets and the candlelight flicker takes over, the transition will feel so much more natural from daylight to evening. Any good interior designer knows that it’s always a sound strategy to bring a bit of the outdoors in, and I feel strongly that one of the most impactful ways to do so is to quite literally invite the sunlight (and twilight) into any space where you’re celebrating.
3. Does the venue offer access and flexibility for design installations and will the onsite team be hospitable to design elements?
I can’t tell you how many times we find an incredible venue and have to cast it aside because we realize it will be inhospitable to the type of wedding our clients desire. A standard venue contract often allows somewhere between 8-12 hours of time. That’s certainly plenty for a wedding reception – which may only require 3-5 hours total. But if you factor in time for deliveries, setup, design installation, and teardown after the wedding is over – 8 hours is almost never enough, and sometimes 12 hours isn’t either. If 8-15 different vendors and suppliers are using one loading dock in the same small window of time, that can be a huge problem. We often need access at least one day before the wedding and if that isn’t possible, it may really restrict the design possibilities to the extent that it just isn’t a viable option as a venue.
Sometimes there’s an easy solution and it’s possible to rent the space for several days. Sometimes that isn’t possible, or the venue won’t even consider it. Those factors hold different weight for different clients and projects – but these are always the types of details we’re considering. As with every vendor we recommend to our clients, when we explore venue options, we’re really searching for a wonderful partner to be part of a larger team of vendors and industry professionals that will collaborate with us to bring a unique vision to life.
I think I could talk about this subject for days on end, but these three tips give a hint of insight into how we think about venue selection for our destination wedding clients.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that logistical considerations don’t matter. They do. There are many factors we’ll consider before we propose any options to our clients, including but not limited to: accessibility, rental costs, food/beverage considerations, inventory, parking, plumbing, power supply, vendor requirements or restrictions, a history of excellent service and testimonials (or lack thereof), etc.
But if you know anything about our work at all, you know that we believe wholeheartedly that solid logistics fall flat without exceptional design to bolster the guest experience, so the aesthetic considerations matter tremendously.