Photo: Paper Antler
You just got engaged (yay!), and now you're literally chomping at the bit to get your wedding venue nailed down. Not so fast though. While it's hard not to get caught up in the initial excitement of planning your big day, jumping the gun on booking anything, especially your wedding venue, could wind up costing you ultimately. Take it from these brides, who definitely didn't learn that lesson the easy way...
1. There's no air-conditioning
"I wish I'd known that the room I would be getting ready in wasn't air-conditioned! When I first visited my venue it was the middle of winter so the thought didn't even cross my mind to ask about AC. I tend to get cranky when I'm hot, so for someone like me this could have been a game changer." — Ashton
2. Real candles aren't allowed
"After I booked my venue I found out we couldn't use real candles. Now I have to buy a bunch of LEDs, which I don't really like the look of. Plus, they're more expensive than tealights so that's annoying." — Caty
3. There are extra fees on top of the total
"I guess I should have read the fine print better! We ended up paying a ridiculous cake-cutting fee, $7 per bag for the hotel to distribute our welcome bags and a few other costs I hadn't anticipated. It definitely added up and took us over our budget." — Katie
See More: One Venue, Six Ways: The Parker Palm Springs
4. You don't really have the venue as long as you think you do
"I wish I'd known that when they told us we could rent the venue until 10:30 pm, that actually meant everyone, including our vendors, had to be all packed up and out of there by 10:30 pm. In other words, we have to wrap up somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00 because of DJ equipment." — Maura
5. No, you can't hang those decorations yourself
"My entire wedding vision pretty much went out the window for 'liability reasons'. The vendor wouldn't let us DIY anything and pretty much said we had to go through her people if we wanted to hang the paper lanterns I had already purchased. It would only cost us a mere $700 for the labor." — Erica
6. Yelp filtered all the bad reviews
"I thought I'd read all the reviews (positive) for my venue before booking, but turns out I didn't! After the wedding, I wrote one and Yelp filtered it, leading me to find all the other filtered ones voicing the same complaints I had. If only I'd known!" — Jackie
7. Other events will be going on the day of too
"We were told that our wedding venue (a farm) only books one event per day, come to find out a few months later that two other couples were also having their wedding the same day as ours. And two corporate events would be ending right when our ceremony was supposed to start! The farm is large and separated by trees into several different spaces so it makes sense, but I definitely felt misled and would have asked a lot more questions, particularly about the noise levels, had I known." — Rene