How important is the venue coordinator?

View quoted message Ooof, that's tough. That being said, it's likely she won't be the one working the floor on your day (it's VERY rare for director level management to work the floor and do the grunt work) and because your event is hopefully post-covid, they should hire all their junior staff back. But if she's the one you go through for all logistics and communication prior to the event where she hands it off to someone random you haven't communicated with, I'd be weary.

View quoted message Unfortunately, she is the director of sales and marketing/events for the venue, so I don't think there's any other coordinator.


Thank you for your input

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Is the person you're dealing with the actual coordinator who will be on-site working your event? If so, that's a red flag. If she's just a sales agent and they another on-site coordinator, that's a different story. If they have multiple coordinators (some venues are big enough to host multiple simultaneous events and will have a team of event coordinators), maybe escalate this to the Event Director or Catering Manager and mention how you're seriously considering the venue with your only hesitation being the coordinator. Maybe they can assign you a different coordinator.

Regardless if you're bringing in a wedding planner/coordinator from outside the venue or not, the role of the venue coordinator is insanely important. They're the ones in charge of the staff working the venue. This means all the kitchen operations, the cleaning services, bar services, timing of the day based on your rental, etc are all funneled into this person. They work in tandem with your wedding planner/day of coordinator. You don't want someone who will flip flop around.

Thank you all for your reply,

What's funny is that out of all the venue tours I've had, there is a slight problem with either the coordinator (I've had the same issue as you Megan, where a couple where they wouldn't reply at all or take a while to respond; or there was a miscommunication (late, didn't schedule the site tour properly on their schedule), or the venue interior/exterior isn't what I'm looking for. I understand that no venue is perfect, but I'm wondering what the best trade-off (venue vs. coordinator) would be since I haven't found the "near-perfect" venue yet that hits all the marks. I've already visited about 12 venues

Personally, the best venue I've seen is way over my budget (~$10k over my budget for the reception itself), but everything else was on-point.

The wedding coordinator may be useful at the venue to help with what you need done at their service. I will say we had an amazing coordinator who not only had set the tables for reception and chairs for the wedding, he went above and beyond to put a dance floor on the carpet for us where it was the right size in front of the head table. We worked together to make things easy to understand for meal options and seating arrangements wise for guests to get the right meals. Cake cutting service was excellent and served with the dessert chosen. I would say its important to have someone know what you have in mind and what they can do to help in any way possible. This venue doesn't seem to have the right candidate to give you the best service and attitude of the coordinator to work along her side. The colours you mentioned are not what you liked either and that seems to displease you too.

I have to say that would be a huge issue for me. When looking at venues the people I dealt with at my venue were one of the biggest reasons I ended up choosing said venue. These are people you have to deal with often for a very important day, and in my opinion if they are treating you like you're not important now, as a prospective client, I don't see that improving if you become their client. Communication was huge for me when picking a venue - some never got back to me, some took 2-3 weeks and that was not going to work for me. The venue I chose gets back to me within 24 hours always, even though my wedding is 2 years away still!

Hello Audrey,
Sorry that you went through that. That’s very unprofessional and frustrating.

I personally believe that having a poor coordinator can definitely ruin your day and you don’t want that. In this case you’ll have to look into a different venue or hats your plan?

Generally I would say a venue coordinator isn't very important. But her indifferent attitude and not getting back to you for 2 weeks are red flags. Just think about if you're unable to get hold of her close to the wedding date because there's an unforeseen issue. For a vendor as important as a venue you really want to make sure there is good communication. If you're also hiring a day of coordinator or a planner it will probably be less of an issue though because it will be them chasing her down rather than you.