Rustic Country or City Chic? Choosing your venue

Choosing your venue is one of your first major decisions of your wedding planning journey, but where to start?

There are so many venues types available. Barns, hotels, country houses, golf clubs, village halls, farms, woodland, city centre and more. It can and will feel daunting of where to start searching, and what you should be searching for.

Hopefully the following can help guide you to deciding on what type of venue will suit you best.

Country or city?

The first question to ask yourself when considering venues is are you a country or city person? Most people will fall in to one of the two categories. If you’re born and bred country, a city centre hotel is not the venue for you. Likewise if you are at your best in the city, you won’t want to choose a muddy farm!

If City your photos will be dominated by roads, architecture and bustling people. Unless you find a green oasis nearby. Country will be green grass, crops, trees, flowers and a bit more green. Think what you want your photos to look like.

Of course there are venues that will cross over but think where would you be comfortable and you can soon discount several options.

Rustic or super chic

For both country and city venues you will again find a split between rustic of chic venues. If you love the rustic feel then barns, farms, marquees and village halls will be more suitable. If you want somewhere super stylish and chic then smart hotels, country houses and unique fashionable venues will rise up the list.

I should clarify rustic doesn’t mean muddy or run down. It’s about less sleek lines and more about rough edges and lots of character!

Already we have split venues into four main groups although there are always unique venues that will sit in their own special category.  Some individual venues that may seem to fall in one category may sit elsewhere because rules are made to be broken!

Unique

Brewery
Historical Ruins
Theme park
Zoo
Tree-house
Boat
Theatre

Accommodation required?

If your guests are not from the local area you will need to consider accommodation and/or transport to said accommodation. This is especially important for country venues when the nearest hotels may be miles away.

Accommodation doesn’t need to be a local hotel on on-site rooms though. If you (and your guests) are country rustic all the way types then camping space can satisfy that criteria.

You should now have narrowed down the sort of venue you are looking for. Time to start searching according to budget and location now to create a short list. Once you have your short list you can go and look round, once Covid allows!