I've really been letting my anxiety get the better of me this week while trying to choose a venue--I'd love to hear about all of your experiences with Friday weddings, mid-November weddings, and general venue hunting!
Over the past few weeks, my fiancé and I have toured a handful of venues. Expectedly, most places are very limited in 2021 and we're looking at a Friday wedding in most cases (Sunday is out for us because we are having a Catholic church ceremony and the timing of that would result in a Sunday evening reception, which seems very ick!). We know we want fall 2021 so are feeling pressure to make a call soon. Having daylight hours is also really important to me.
We think we've narrowed it down to one venue, a cool mansion. However--they have Saturday September 11th (a strong nope), Saturday November 13th, and virtually any Friday in fall 2021.
We were leaning toward Friday at 3 or 4 for daylight purposes, but my parents want the ceremony to start much later if it's on Friday. We worry mid-November will be too cold, bad weather, and too dark too early--we will have to use an (enclosed) porch to seat all of our guests, and really want to use the lawn and other covered porches if we choose this venue.
On top of all that, I've just found this entire process very stressful because no venue is perfect, and the more I think about it all the less confident I feel in our decisions. I'm now leaning toward viewing more venues, even though we were both really excited and loved this one when we saw it!
So I have a multitude of concerns:
1.) Should we ignore my parents and just go for an October Friday at 3 or 4 so I can have that daylight? Most people are local and those who aren't would likely take off Friday to travel anyway. But I worry a large chunk of people would skip or miss the ceremony--that would make me so sad! We would ideally like to do a farewell brunch on Saturday in this situation for our out of town guests, which would certainly increase costs overall (although that is a decision we can make later).
2.) Is mid-November likely to be as cold and dark as I think it is? Or is the fact that it would be a Saturday enough to outweigh those concerns? (Sunset would be before 4:30, so we would likely do a 1 or 2pm ceremony).
3.) Generally, for anyone who is as indecisive as me...how did you choose your venue, and feel confident that you were making the best call? I'm worried looking at more will just result in other, similar venues with equal problems and complicate things!
