Stressed out bride - venue

Hi Cassie! Congratulations on your engagement! It’s really great to have you join us in the community!

You are absolutely not alone in feeling like this. Have you had the chance to browse through the WeddingWire venue search? There may some venues there that you have not come across yet. You can out their customer reviews and FAQs before you contact them too, which is very helpful! You can filter your search by venue type, town/city, capacity, and amenities.

As Haley mentioned, the number of guests will largely dictate the cost. This is certainly something to think about at least.

Lastly, if you do not want to elope, do not feel like it is the only alternative!

Have you looked into Airbnbs as a non-tradition venue? If you find a property that allows guests to host events, it may be a cheaper alternative.

Hi Cassie!

Congrats on your engagement! I did get quite a few reasonable quotes, but I did email every venue, lol. I also had to shorten the guest list because food alone will kill your budget. I got a pretty reasonable quote from the Christmas Farm Inn up north. It's a lovely place and worth considering. I also looked around in Massachusetts as well. I ended up choosing the Victoria Inn in Hampton, NH. Definitely more than 10K, but it's in our budget. I am pretty sure you can get it in your budget if you shorten the guest list.

Good luck!

Hi Cassie! Not sure where in NH you're planning your wedding, but my fiancé and I found that having our wedding during an off-season helped lower the price of the venue. it's at an apple Orchard in May, where fall is their busiest season with apple picking as well as pretty busy for weddings. Their pricing was significantly lower for winter and early spring months as opposed to late summer and fall. It was even lower for Friday and Sunday weddings. The best part about having our wedding when we are is that all their fruit trees will be in full bloom. Just something to consider!

When we were looking at venues around 120 seemed to be a cutoff between smaller wedding spaces and bigger wedding venues. Like some spaces could do up to about 100-120 and then either couldn't handle more or had to add on a lot of fees for extra tent rentals, porta potties, etc. for those extra guests. It might be worth seeing if trimming your guest list just a tiny bit opens up more venue options or saves you a lot of money - economy of scale type thing.

Also if your budget is $10k for venue alone, possibly consider if you can cut budget elsewhere to get that number up to $12k. I think you'd have a lot more options with just a few less guests and a couple extra thousand dollars of wiggle room.