Fall 2022 Wedding, Unable to Book Ceremony & Reception Venue

Not sure where you're located, but none of the venues in my area do this. We're getting married Jan. 2022 and booked our venue and two of our vendors 2 months ago. There was no hesitation whatsoever on their part, they were actually glad that we wanted to get everything done early! The venue owner told us it was a good idea we decided to book her in 2020 because she was bumping her prices up for our wedding year, so we got lucky!

Definitely have back up plans in case the venues they have picked out fall through! Just because they have the couple penciled in for a certain date, does not guarantee their wedding date will be saved! Better to have a plan B, C, etc. than no backup plans at all! 🙂

A lot of times you cannot actually book something too far in advance because accepting a deposit too early really messes with the bookkeeping. Also changes in laws, insurance, etc can require contracts to change from time to time, so businesses won't accept a deposit and sign a contract too far in advance of a date because they have been advised not to by their lawyers. And many businesses readjust their pricing annually to adjust for inflation and other factors, so they won't book too far out as they cannot accurately predict what the true cost of service will be years in advance.

Penciling someone in is a way for the venue to hold the spot without accepting a monetary deposit or having signed a contract. If this is how the venue typically conducts business, then I wouldn't worry. I would however make a note of the date when you can actually "officially" book the venue and be sure to complete the deposit/contract as soon as you legally can do so - so if they January 1, 2021 is the soonest you can officially book, then I'd call them the minute they open on that day (or realistically Jan 2 since most places are closed for the New Year holiday).

Unfortunately, it's really common, when I first got engaged around June of 2019 and I told my venue that I wanted to get married in 2021, and not 2020, many told me that I would have to wait till early 2021 till they open bookings up and everything. However, I'll be honest when I say that you should take precautions for if a venue falls through.

Actually pretty surprised by all the comments stating how common this is. Yes, I've heard of it before, but it always seemed so frustrating -- multiple couples having to wait until a particular date to try and all call to snag the slot before the next person? No thank you.

(I'm in Ohio too, but the Cleveland area.)

Around here, it seems much more common to take far-out reservations, and then if the couple needs to cancel, they are either out the deposit or are in charge of finding another couple to "sell" their date to so that neither party is out money.

I booked our venue two years out with no issues, which put me at ease because we selected a very popular date. We also booked several of our other vendors 2 years out -- photography, DJ, officiant.

As PPs mentioned, this is a thing though, so I'd hope for the best but definitely have a back-up option. Good luck!