Venue red flags

My red flags might be different from others. The first thing that makes me wonder is when they call and how much they call. I hate to be harassed from any vendor, that tells me you are not making money . And if you aren't making money then you are not experienced.

I honest hate venues that have old fashion painting and fake flowers on the walls. Under all of that dusty stuff it's a nice place.

And of course higher deposits and not flexible at all with payment arrangements. I visited one place and they wanted 50% of the bill up front to book.

Any contract that said "open bar" as a cost of part of their price per person and then when I met with them said the bar is open and we will give people 3 drink tickets each.

totally defeating the purpose of open bar to me. I have guests that don't drink at all, who arn't going to seek out my drinking guests to give them their tickets, so we would have been paying like $75 per person, and then the venue would have made like 3 drink's worth of money off people that don't drink +been charging our guests who do drink for every drink over 3. boooo rather pay per drink

I only looked at 2 venues. The one I didn't book had 2 things that really alarmed me:

1. For use of their kitchen (which was a small room with countertops and a microwave and sink), the fee was a percentage of the caterers bill (outside caterers only, had to be licensed). Is that normal?

2. It had 2 levels that could be rented together or seperately, and we would have rented both of them. The ceremonny would have been on the lower level in the garden (or in the case of bad weather, it would have been on the lower level). The reception would have been on the main (upper) level. The building was old, so the stairs connecting the 2 levels were narrow and steep. The ramp was outside and not fully covered, so older guests and less mobile guests would have a hard time moving between the 2 levels.

My red flags were :

*price and pricing structure

*food and booze that were offered with pricing

*places that had the ceremony and reception at the same facility

*handicapped accessable rooms, you would be surprised the places that weren't!

*places that held more than one reception at the same place - I wanted to be the only party there

My red flags were:

*Slow or no responses. I can't tell you how many caterers and vendors just didn't return my calls/emails, or returned them with half-a@@ cut/pasted answers, or scheduled phone conferences and then bailed. If this is how you treat me when you're trying to win my business, how will you treat me once you've cashed my check? I gave them one more chance using a different avenue (phone vs. email) and if I still didn't get good response I crossed them off the list, no matter how amazing their reviews. Eff that!

*NOT. LISTENING. We talked with a few of "THE" vendors in Chicago and they were such divas. They just talked about themselves. One venue owner asked us ZERO questions about our wedding and told me several times my questions about layout were "bad questions" b/c our caterer would figure it out. Um, we don't have a caterer yet, how 'bout you tell me where the tables usually go instead of bragging about your photo shoot with Sheryl Crow? D-bag.

My red flags: Putting down a deposit, having to wait 2-3 weeks between email responses and then receiving a response with a new price list and contract attached with no mention of price increases and see that salads went up $1.25 (among other things)

Red flags for me: a venue that would have two weddings in the same day - for example one venue had a wedding at 11am and was supposed to end at 3pm and the next wedding started at 5. Another was when they would give you a pricing sheet and then later say oh btw you need to add 20% service charge and 5% tax - I didn't get why they wouldn't print that on their pricing sheet.

My big one was how long it took to get an appointment. I would e-mail and request a date and if they could do it great. If not, I'd give them another option of a day I was available and if both dates were a no go, then I decided they didn't want my business badly enough.

Also, including a lot of things for "free" but constantly telling us about the fact that we'd likely want to upgrade. If it's free and hideous, why throw it in?

I only checked out one venue so I don't really have any red flags....I would only that a lot of the venues that I was looking at online did more than one wedding which was a big red flag for me - sorry! I want all the attention LOL

Another red flag is their presentation....not me but my sister went to a venue and she said it was beautiful outside and inside but I don't know something was definitely up with the rep because he said that he couldn't show her around the place and basically just handed her documents that looked like they were just copied and then that was it! how rude!!!!!

My red flag was a place that said, "Oh, you need to book us 2 years in advance". Seriously? I just knew they were catering to a totally different kind of bride and found a much more laid-back venue.