Do you need to love the venue staff?

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Ugh I hate vendors that take forever. FH and I scheduled a tour a day for 3 days. By day 3 we were feeling a little discouraged by prices and such so we opted to cancel our appointment. I just emailed saying "Hey so sorry to do this but it appears I've come down with a touch of the flu so we're going to have to cancel. Maybe we can reschedule for next week?"

The tour was scheduled for Wednesday. I emailed her Tuesday evening. She didn't get back to me until the following Tuesday. Like, I know you're busy, but I also just freed up an hour of your time? We never did reschedule that one.

In the end we decided on the second venue we went to. The other two were nice, but we were looking for a barn venue and the others were more of a "non-committal" barn style. Like, the insides were drywalled and stuff. So we decided to go with the one that was more of a true barn (in fact, I think it may have been an actual farm site). Plus they didn't have restrictions beyond "must be prepared in a licensed kitchen" for the food, and we might opt to cater our own wedding. Everyone else said it had to be a licensed caterer and stuff.

To me the staff at something as important as a wedding makes a HUGE difference. We visited several venues and the one we ended up picking the event coordinator was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of first impressions of the service provided. When I first called to inquire, she got on the phone immediately and talked to me for 45 minutes and emailed me immediately while some others took several days or a week just to phone me back. She's still amazing to this day and emails me back within 30 minutes of me emailing her!

Funny story one of the venues we visited we waited for over 45 minutes and the event coordinator never showed up for our appointment. We eventually approached the hostess and asked what was going on so she got the manager who told us the event coordinator "no longer works there as of this morning". It was a beautiful venue but it definitely left us with a bad impression of their whole operation!

You made the right choice! The venue can be made fancier with decor and whatnot, but the event coordinator is somebody you have to be able to work with...they're responsible for helping bring your vision to life without causing you any added worry or stress. And for them to give you a discount...even better! You can use it toward spicing up the venue or you can just save it for other things. Congratulations on booking your venue!

I think you made the right choice. I'm not super happy with my venue and it has created extra stress for me because their communication and organization skills are terrible.

Update on this for those interested: we went with the not-as-fancy venue with a good vibe. It's still perfectly nice, they offered us a discount, it has a more "us" vibe, and as a bonus, it's actually bigger!

That's a hard one. How much did you not click with the people at the nicer venue? I picked a lot of my vendors based on feelings and prices, so you have to be comfortable with your choice at the end of the day.

Its hard because those are the people youll be going back and forth with and will be doing your wedding. maybe she was having a bad day and it was just a one off? i feel like coordinators are always very people friendly

Personally, the connection to the venue was the deciding factor for us, not our connection to the owner. We just loved it and wanted to be married there. For the most part, your communication with the venue will be through email, and hopefully infrequent. I liked our venue staff well enough. They answered our questions and were upfront about the expectations they had of us. I didn't LOVE them. I loved the space they created, and that's what was special to us.

As much as I agree that you need to mesh with the coordinator... I would go with the better venue. If it's everything you want and has all those perks for the same price then I would go with them.

Do they only have one event coordinator? Could you ask for a different one? We were randomly assigned an officiant by our venue. When we found out he wasn’t licensed to perform same sex marriages we asked to be reassigned to someone else. Even though we aren’t a same sex couple we wanted to make sure we had an officiant with similar values to our own.

Definitely you need to mesh with the event co ordinator they are going to ensure that your wedding day will go smoothly

Thanks for the input! I'm trying to decide if I'm being too dramatic with the Event Coordinator, but there have been a few things that just rubbed me the wrong way, like cancelling a venue tour last minute, or making assumptions about the gender roles we will play in the wedding (it's a gay wedding).

None of it is an outright dealbreaker, and some of it is just the vibe she's giving me that she doesn't truly care about us and our relationship, which is making it hard for me to trust that it'll be a good experience.

Edited so it's easier to read.

I agree with Kelsie, I would want to get along with the event coordinator since you will be working lots with them.

Maybe see if there is any other venues in your area, before you feel like you have to settle for the less-nice venue.

You definitely want to mesh well with the coordinator - they’re the one that is going to help you with your day.