Venue Booking Nightmare

We booked our venue about 9 months in advance.

Have you been saving for the wedding? What percent of your total wedding budget is the $2500 for the venue?

We booked our original venue 2 years in advance (not normal) but due to some mismanagement on their part we booked a new venue a little over 12 months in advance. Also not normal but for an Armenian wedding in our area, LA, it is not uncommon for the good venues to be booked 2 years in advance.

Also your deposit seems a bit high, have you toured other venues? Does this deposit also include a deposit for catering?

Also you don't have to answer but keep in mind before you sign a contract.

What is your overall budget? If you are having trouble scraping together $2,500 now only 10 months before the wedding, will you have budgeted and saved enough to make the final payments before the event? They usually require full payment 1 week-1 month before the event.

Well it's really just me cause I make nothing compared to him and I'm trying my best to pull my weight with paying for the wedding too. I'm looking up other jobs on the side to help as well and he's all about saving for a house afterwards. Our budget is $15k, we're having a small wedding on a beach.

We booked 18 months in advance. You can always push the date back if you can’t book the venue in time.

We booked about a year in advance. If you can't make the deposit yet, wait til you have the money to, go back and see if your date is still available. Or something close to it? Good luck.

I did about 18 months I'm advanced but the venue filled up a few weeks after I booked.
Honestly most vendors will require large deposits, you might want to consider saving all the money before you even bother planning. If pushing it out brings you more financial stability then it's worth the wait.

We booked our venue for our 4/25/2020 wedding in February 2019. Venues in our area book fast and we wanted to ensure we had our top choice booked.

We booked about a year in advance. That was plenty of time for us with our Friday wedding. However, it would not have worked out if we had chosen a Saturday - we would have had to book a year and a half or more.

Large deposits are fairly common - that's usually the first big chunk of wedding costs that you see come out of the bank. I would consider maybe working on saving up that much money and pushing back your date if the amount of the deposit is really that much of a financial struggle for you! Best of luck!

We booked ours in March of this year for our October 2020 wedding

We booked in August 2018 for October 2019 wedding. Don't freak out, but you may want to look on pushing it back a little if need be.

We booked our venue 22 months in advance which I know is not the normal but we are having a 26 month engagement and I was just so eager to start planning that we booked the major things like venue, DJ, photography, and caterer all before the 18 month mark.

As PP have said can you take the money from somewhere else in your budget and then just continue to save and replenish it?

We booked a little over a year out. When we met with the venue, they only had 1 Friday left for the month we wanted. We still we in the air on the venue, but we went outside and decided it was perfect before we got to the car and went back to have her pencil the date so we could come back with the deposit the next week. I understand that deposits are a lot of money, and if you can’t come up with it shortly, there’s no reason to hold out for a further date after you do have the money. Nobody knows that is your date until you book it and tell people.

We booked our venue 11 months in advance. It was the first thing we did. Our date was the only one in the spring they had left due to a cancellation so we had to jump on it

When this happened for me and my fiancé, we honestly chose a different venue. Not solely because of the expensive deposit but also because of how much more expensive the venue was in general. I would say either shop around or if you know that you want that venue, either wait and dont put a deposit down right away or work extra, have a garage sale, cut back on expenses etc.

Hi Victoria! How have you been feeling since? Did you decide when to put the deposit down?