Ceremony and Reception Sites

The ceremony and reception sites are obviously very important for the wedding and putting a lot of thought into picking the right place is important. Think about where you want to remember the moment when you promised to love and honor the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Do you want it to be in the church where you both grew together? Or perhaps on the beach with sand between your toes. It is very important that you as a couple actually agree on where you want the ceremony and reception to be. Check into multiple sites on the internet and then schedule tours of each one all on the same day. We did this and it helped us to remember the things we liked and did not like at each venue and mention things we found out as we went along. We are members of a church back where we grew up so it was a no-brainer where we wanted to the ceremony to happen, but the reception was a total mystery.

The ceremony site is the place you will remember most. The church where you get married or the gazebo or beach or wherever you choose to say your vows will always be a special place. On the other hand, perhaps you want a destination wedding in Hawai’i or Las Vegas. In that case, I would recommend you call the site and ask questions before you even consider booking it for your wedding. That way you will know you can reach the owners and how helpful and accessible they will be. Finally, with the ceremony site you need to find out if you are able to have your reception at the same site and if not, you need to decide where you want it to be. Our church does not allow alcohol so we had to pick a different site for our reception because we wanted to be able to drink champagne.

Booking the reception site is one of the more stressful parts of the wedding planning process. The major things involved in choosing the reception site include going over the guest list again, picking the menu for the food you will serve and deciding what sort of celebration you want it to be. Based on the capacity of the reception site, you might have to cull the list of guests you invited to wedding down to a manageable number for the reception. Then you must pick the type of food you want to serve which can be a sit down meal, a buffet or something in-between. The type of food you choose can easily set the tone for the type of celebration you want the reception to be with sit down meals considered more elaborate and buffets more relaxed. We picked our site because I had been to a wedding there before and really liked it and told my fiancée about it. We set-up an appointment to take a tour of the site and meet all the staff and ended up falling in love with the owners and site. When you find the right place, you will know it.