How Long Did it Take to Finalize Your Venue Contract?

We went back and forth a few times. That's the nature of doing business. Rarely do people agree to all the terms on the boilerplate contract. You want to make sure everything is there because that is the only leverage you have to make sure it happens.

Initial contact with our venue was March 2.
We toured April 3. (We wanted to check out some cheaper venues first.)
We went back and forth asking questions and getting clarification for 5 days before signing.

I did similar things with my DJ, photobooth, and my transportation.

A huge part of me choosing to do business with anyone has to do with if they will clarify any and all things in a contract.

Each contract varies for each event.. it does depend on what you want and what you are supposed to have. Look it over all you want to make sure it's right... I don't think you will offend them. They have to understand how important that day will be.

The same day we toured the venue, we added and took out certain things that we need 100% the guest would not eat . We customized it to our liking. We left that same day with a signed customized contract

We couldn’t afford our venue’s initial proposal. It took over a month of negotiating & us changing our vision to make it work. FYI, we saved over 50% on the site fee by choosing an off-season, weekday night.

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We wanted to do that too, but it's destination and that would have been too inconvenient for our guests. Lucky you!

My venue has been an absolute nightmare since the moment we booked it. Terrible communication the whole way. You just never know..

Our venue's "standard" contract was pretty detailed. But they did add in some of the details about outside vendors and such, so we went back and forth on email a couple of times. But once all of our questions were answered, and everything was in place we signed. It only took about a week after our visit there to get it finalized. No big.

My venue doesn't do tailoring or changes to their contracts, but they do have you sit down and read the whole thing together before signing. I had looked online and it was the only place in my budget on the day I wanted so I signed the day I toured. 🤷

We went back & forth several times until I was comfortable with all the provisions. They made several important changes to the contract that we felt were very one sided & some just didn’t make sense, or didn’t apply to our case.

You are signing a legally binding document, so you should be comfortable with what’s in it. Contracts are not personal & there is no room for anybody to be offended. Your venue is protecting themselves with that contract, so you need to make sure you are protected as well.

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Tee hee. Ours was a DW. Part of the "vision" we changed was inviting 40 guests--too expensive for us and them. So we opted for a 15-person DW and local reception a few months later for everyone else. Worked perfectly!

We had our questions/ anything that was unclear answered and then signed our contract the same day. To be far we can back out up to 30 days before the wedding with no penalty. Its not a standard wedding venue which has pros/cons.

View Quoted Comment We have a second venue option, which is also not a standard venue, and we can cancel with a $200 cancellation fee up to 7 days before. That's tempting. lol

Definitely make revisions that you want and go back and forth as much as it takes to make sure you're happy and that everything you could possibly want is written out in detail. NOTHING is implied... make sure everything is in the contract. (Spoken from someone who, months after contract-signing, has been repeatedly told by the venue "we never said that!" to all sorts of things)

It took us about 6 minutes after we toured it. It was straight forward, nothing we didn't agree on.