Booking venues a year in advance

@Sarah - Uh oh :0. For now let's just go with Chicago suburbs, large golf club/country club, outdoor estate or banquet hall, Saturday, late summer.

It's pretty much vital. I'm already booking next fall, and usually we're one of the last vendors that get booked.

We booked 15 months in advance and they had no Saturdays available at our venue.

You may have slim options 9 months out in most places, for both your venue and any vendors.

I would book as soon as possible. Especially if you have a specific date you want. That is a large wedding and most venues cannot accommodate that many ppl.

For a wedding that large I'd say it's a must.

Mrs. Fall Bride - Oh, I thought summer (may / june) was hot? I thought early fall would be "off-peak"...

Wedding season is generally May-October, and those dates tend to book up, especially at popular venues. For our church and hall, we would have had to go to 2019 to book those months, and we booked in 2016 and actually lucked into our date just ahead of someone else.

September and October are typically the most in-demand dates.

How much of a rush you need to be in depends on how flexible you are. We had to book two years out to get the venue we wanted. But if you are open to whatever is left over, there is bound to be *something.*

Ahhhh crap

You would need to either be super flexible on your date or super flexible on your venue (or both!). We booked our venue 15 months in advance and there were only 2 dates left at that point for the month of November (we'd considered Oct or Nov but there was absolutely nothing in Oct).

Well, I would agree, you have to book a year ahead, but you cannot book till you sort out finances. AND I would seriously warn you, do NOT count on people contributing until you actually have the money.

I think you're doing the right thing by getting the vital stuff figured out first, but the longer you wait the smaller the selection will be, so be sure to be flexible on the venue and the date. I picked my venue 13 months in advance and I took the last Saturday in March available.

9 months is fine, if you are ready to accept that you might not be able to get that date. I don't know about all other areas, but off-peak in NY is December-March (sometimes April depending on the venue). I booked mine more than a year out and still had to give up my hope for a March (off-peak) wedding because there were very few openings left.

My suggestion to you is to get things in order, especially finances, and then think about what date you can logically and responsibly do.

I guess we might need to do a Sunday...or split ceremony/reception?

We got engaged last July and I booked at the end of July. When I asked about dates for my reception space and church, our date was the ONLY one available at both sites in all of June/July (I didn't ask about any other months). So you need to be flexible with either your date or venue choice, because unless you book early you probably won't get both.

You can't split the ceremony and reception. You need to host your guests from start to finish.

If you are dead set on a date, it's super important. You basically can't do anything else without a set date.

Yeah, i booked my venue about 15 months out. we were open to generally any weekend in the summer, and i was surprised that most of the summer was already booked when i looked!

Chicago suburbs here.. for our church they had almost every weekend available. We went to look at venues in May of 2016 and booked our July 2017 wedding in may. The venue we chose only had 1 Saturday in July and 1 Saturday in August left when we talked in May. They had many Fridays and Sundays available though. But definitely look at your budget first!

My youngest daughter (@Spaghetti) is getting married in "off season" in the Chicago burbs and is already booked for 11/10/18. Her first date choice of 11/3 was not available. Most venues we looked at were Nov - Mar as off season while the one she booked at is Nov - Apr. I would really try to start booking now!