A couple of days ago, I spoke with coordinator at our venue and I was told they are now booking multiple weddings on the same day to accommodate those that have had to postpone their weddings because of Covid. The venue coordinator confirmed that another couple is interested in booking our venue on the same day, but at an earlier time. The venue coordinator said that they would possibly need to push back our ceremony time from 4:30 to 6:00 pm. I spoke with my fiance and we are really uncomfortable with this idea so I reached out to two other venues that we toured, but had previously decided not to go with. We like both, but there are cons with both. I was hoping someone might be able to help us decide.
Venue 1 - The venue is a hotel that offers both indoor and outdoor areas. The area with the gazebo can only accommodate approximately 100 people, but our guest list is 150 people. They have another area which is just a field that we could have the ceremony at, but the field looks very plain to me so we would need to rent like an arch or something to make it look better. Unfortunately, I can't locate any photos of the field. If the weather is bad, the backup location is the ballroom which they would then transformed to the reception area during cocktail hour. The doors in the back of the room which is where I would walk through are off to the side so I wouldn't have a straight walk down the aisle which I think could look weird, but we are hoping we wouldn't need to use the backup option. My fiance loves the area they have for cocktail hour as it looks like a bar. It makes me nervous because my dad is a recovering alcoholic so the extremely bar feel that my fiance loves probably wouldn't be the best atmosphere for my dad.
Venue 2 - The venue is a hotel that used to be a train station and it has beautiful marble and architecture. The ceremony would be in the lobby of the hotel. There is a restaurant also in the lobby so I'm not sure if all of the tables would be moved for the ceremony or not. I'm told the chairs would be set up where the piano currently is at. I am concerned about how they prevent random hotel guests from walking into our ceremony since it is in the lobby of a hotel. My fiance is very much an outdoors person which is why we originally didn't pick this venue because there is no space for an outdoor ceremony. There is also limited locations at the venue for outdoor photos so we would have to find another space to take photos outside if we wanted a lot of outdoor photos. The outside of the building also isn't the most appealing. The indoor photos would be very pretty because of the architecture of the building though. Based on reviews, the coordinator at the venue is rather new which also makes me nervous as we didn't plan on hiring a wedding planner or day of coordinator. We could have cocktail hour in the lobby for an additional $1,500 or in a "pre-fuction" area which would be free of charge. It doesn't have the bar feel like the other venue which I like, but my fiance doesn't.
