Picking your wedding venue is one of the key aspects of wedding planning and it pretty much dictates everything else for your wedding – the date, the style and maybe even the type of dress you go for. So it goes without saying this is a big decision!
Despite working in the wedding industry for almost five years before getting engaged, I didn’t have my heart set on a particular venue – or rather I did but it kept changing every few weeks!
To begin with we didn’t actually even have a set location in mind, I grew up in Berkshire and my fiancé Ian grew up in Kent and we live together in Surrey, so we cast our venues net across pretty much the whole of the South East of England in hope of finding the perfect location.
We knew we wanted a country setting and the option of getting married outside but apart from that we were quite flexible. The first venue we went to go and see was Froyle Park in Hampshire – it’s a beautiful Jacobean manor house that has stunning grounds and the most beautiful ballroom. As soon as we visited it I knew it was a serious contender but I wanted to still go to all our other venue appointments and not get swept up in the first venue we saw. We visited about five further venues, some came close to what we wanted and others I think I already knew as soon as we arrived that it wasn’t what I wanted.
I would compare picking a venue to buying a house, you need to make sure it fulfils all your necessary requirements but there is also an emotional feeling where you just know its right for you. We didn’t really visit another venue after Froyle Park that gave us ‘the feeling’. So we went back to Froyle Park for a second viewing and this time I took my trusty notebook filled with questions and non-negotiables we wanted for the wedding and after speaking with the wedding co-ordinator, I really felt it was perfect for us.
So now we had a venue and a wedding date (May 2016!), it was time to choose a colour scheme. Our venue is fairly neutral which was great for allowing us to choose any colour scheme we want and we decided on mint green. We are just in the process of finalising our invitations and have given a hint of our colour scheme by using mint green chevrons as the base of our stationery and I’ve spent my last few evenings busy making envelope liners that I will be sure to photograph and share with you when I am done!
Just four months to go now…
All images via Froyle Park
Comments will be approved before showing up.