The No. 1 Venue Question
The Deciding Factor Often Ignored
You’ve seen the website, got the brochure, now you’re off to view the venue – what’s the number one question you need answering? You might be surprised to find out what it is.
There are many online and printed guides to choosing a wedding venue that list dozens of detailed questions about the available dates, room layouts, organising wedding rehearsals and much more.
You might be surprised to know it’s not any of those detailed questions about venue capacity, the food, the location or even the price that really count.
Sure, you’ll need to be able to decide if the venue is totally unsuitable if you’re planning a wedding for 120 people and the venue capacity is only 80, or if the pricing is well out of your spending range.
But, when it comes down to the final decision there’s one key question – you can’t ask it, but by the end of the viewing it should have been answered – do the people at the venue care?
So if you don’t ask that question, how do you get it answered? Here are some tail-tale signs that people at the venue care enough to do a great job for you:
1. The person showing you around listened to what you had to say – By that, we don’t mean simply let you speak. You need to get the feeling that they want to know what’s important to you, both by asking for your thoughts and properly listing to your answers.
2. It’s not rehearsed sales-speak – If the presentation seems overly rehearsed, as if the person showing you around is going through a rehearsed sales pitch, or simply going through the motions, it’s unlikely they’ll do a great job making your wedding all it can be. They probably treat every customer the same and won’t give you the attention you deserve.
3. You feel that that you’re dealing with people who know – While you shouldn’t expect every question to be answered immediately, you should expect that most are. If not, you have to ask if people at the venue really know their stuff and can deliver on the day.
4. The staff follow up – If a question needed more investigation, or there’s some other thing about the wedding that you were struggling to make a decision on, do the venue staff follow-up with answers? If not, then can you trust them to follow through on other tasks.
It’s possible that the venue you’re interested won’t get a perfect score on these measures, in which case you’ll need to go with your gut instinct, but it’s likely that the best venue will score well overall and leave a great impression. If you can’t find a venue that does, our advice is – keep looking!
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