Tag Archives: wedding plans

Wedding Shopping Online: Wedding Locations

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This site may have to be booked online! Photo courtesy of Caneel Bay, www.rosewoodhotels.com

The location of your wedding opens up so many opportunities for bringing your wedding vision to life. A magical garden setting, a modern church with wooden beams and light streaming through skylights and windows, a regal ballroom with a grand staircase and sparkling chandeliers…the options are so varied, and brides today are lucky to have so many romantic and impressive wedding locations to choose from.

Of course, you’ll tour your sites — or take a virtual tour for a destination wedding spot you can’t easily reach — but what’s going on with online booking? In The Wedding Report’s new Online Wedding Market Report, we’re seeing that many brides and grooms are booking their locations online, either traditionally or using mobile devices. For the ceremony location, online booking is up 25.9% over 2011, and for the reception location, online booking and paying is up 40.2% over last year. Since mobile devices make it so easy and secure to click and book, check this out: mobile device-booking of ceremony sites is up 131.9% and reception spots are mobile-booked 138.5% more than last year.

That’s a lot of click-and-buy going on out there, which got me wondering why the trend in online and mobile booking for locations is so hot. Isn’t anyone sitting down and writing a check after their tours of the locations? Some couples are, but it seems like more couples are choosing to buy online, even after they’ve walked through the ballrooms, gardens, bridal suites, outdoor terraces, churches, synagogues and Gatsby-like estate houses. Here are some reasons why booking online might be your choice:

1. It’s how your site does bookings now. With technology so evolved, and busy wedding sites streamlining their processes to allow for less time in the office and more time making their brides’ and grooms’ wedding dreams come true, it might be the site’s preference to have you buy online and get right into their one, perfected system. Your event gets auto-filed into every spreadsheet they have, an interactive folder is automatically made for you, and your plans are super-organized and even copied to you. You may be able to log into their password-protected planning page for your wedding to drop in menu and decor ideas and follow their planning timeline and worksheets. Simply put, your site might not do the ‘writing a check’ thing anymore.

2. Couples are spending more time investigating their sites. In addition to the in-person tour, there’s a big collection of information to go through, including a lengthy contract that contains all the terms for what’s going to be provided on the day, what happens if you need to move your date, cancel, postpone or change your guest count, and more. Wedding couples are wisely bringing these info packets home, fine-tooth-combing each site’s contract and menus lists, emailing questions to the site manager, and investing more time in smart shopping. They’re also likely contacting referral couples and friends they know who got married there. So that leaves them sitting together at 10pm surrounded by pretty brochures and packets from the loveliest ceremony and reception locations, until they’re ready to book the sites they decide on. We’re all so busy now…much of wedding planning is taking place in the late-night hours, or on weekend days when you have time to concentrate on wedding plans but the sites are busy with the weddings taking place there at the moment.

3. Couples are more interested than even in protecting their charges. They’re using credit cards with great customer protection, including recalling payments made to unprofessional vendors and double-booked sites. They’d rather book online through a secure connection, maybe through their PayPal if they’d rather not run up their credit cards. And perhaps they participate in a system that gives them rewards for clicking through a particular site to reach their wedding URLs, giving them a 1% cashback perk.

4. Couples may be planning from a distance. If they live far away from the hometown where the wedding will take place, booking online is their only option.

5. They just want to book those sites quickly, get it done, before dates in popular months book up.

Why do you think the practice of booking ceremony and reception locations online and with mobile devices is on an upswing? If you book wedding plans online, or with your smartphone, what’s driving you to do so? We’d love to know how you plan to book, or have booked, your locations!

DIY Wedding Projects: What Do you Expect to Save?

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When considering DIY projects for your wedding, how much money do you think they’ll save you? As I mentioned in my prior post, our Trend Talk survey revealed that 88.8% of respondents said they’d DIY as a way to save, and now let’s look at just how much of a savings you might expect.

75% to 100%? No, that’s our last-ranking response, with just 5 votes. Unless they’re picking up pinecones from their backyard, putting them in vases and calling it a day. But we know you have more in mind than that…like gorgeous invitations and save the date cards (they cost money for great papers and printing,) table linen overlays (you’ll pay for pretty, shimmery fabrics,) favors and more.

I see our #1 response as completely realistic: 35% of survey-takers said they expect to save 25% to 49% on their DIY tasks. Brides want quality DIY projects, and they know that quality depends on good materials. We’re talking gorgeous organic roses, imported or recycled content cotton papers for invitations, shimmery charmeuse fabric for table overlays. Here’s the rule: anything that wedding guests will touch, feel, taste, or smell had better be top-quality. And you really do have to pay an amount of money for that.

Professional wedding vendors know this, and they stake their careers on acquiring top-tier materials for the projects they make you, and their expertise in making bridal bouquets is priceless. You don’t want your DIY bouquet falling apart as you’re walking down the aisle because Aunt Bertha used Scotch tape to hold the stems together. So here’s my top tip for the day: think really hard about whether or not you can master the art of bouquet-making for your wedding day before you plan to DIY it. A much safer bet is saving your DIYs for the engagement party florals and invitations, food, drinks, and desserts, or for the bridal shower, the morning-after breakfast…other events encircling your dream wedding day when you might not need or want a pro involved.

Those savings still count…and isn’t 49% off a $400 engagement party a welcome treat? Would you love for your bridesmaids to save that 49% on the bridal shower, or your in-laws who traveled across the country to spend 49% less on the rehearsal dinner?

DIY savings apply to all…so again, keep in mind that it’s most realistic to save that 25% to 49% on your well-planned DIY tasks. Pushing for 75% to 100% off could very well land you with disaster bouquets, itchy linens, horrible hems, and faded invitations. Or a huge waste of money when those nearly-free DIY project supplies show up and are completely unusable. Which means you have to go out and buy more. That’s the risk of a too-cheap-to-be-good DIY plan.

Unique wedding locations add a dash of flair

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A lovely sight at a family farm wedding

In recent months, rustic weddings held in barns and at outdoor settings have been a popular choice, and the trend points to the importance of a floral designer’s or coordinator’s eagle-eye for design detail in a unique site. They take one look at a unique site’s existing architecture, high ceilings, exposed beams, finials on window treatments, fireplaces…and they sketch out masterpieces for brides and grooms on any budget to create a celebration that looks like a million bucks. Without the million bucks.

An estate house's veranda overlooking a golf course, TheParkSavoy.com

When you choose a unique location that already has phenomenal existing details, you only need to add a few more decor touches. That makes wise budget sense. And that magically turns into the impression that you spent a lot more.

The write-in site suggestions in the 2010 Ceremony and Reception Study provide a jaw-dropping collection of locales that could be home to your amazing wedding. Here are just a few that floored me for their design opportunities and guests’ Wow Factor: aquarium, art gallery, country B&B, and opera house. Several write-ins mentioned ranches for that rustic appeal, and I love the idea of renting out a family farm for your wedding’s setting.

Beyond the rustic appeal of a farm, you’d be doing a wonderful thing in helping to support the small farm community. I talked to a local farm family who beamed about recent weddings they hosted, how their teams helped set up tents in cleared, non-grazing fields, strung lights along their barns, and offered steep discounts on their own organic crops for the caterer’s use. Couples further supported them by offering the farm’s own organic honey pots as favors, and place setting cards were attached to farm-grown apples and pears.

If you wish to find a family farm, visit www.localharvest.org, and call or visit to ask about private events held on their grounds during the different seasons. Expect the farm to enforce rules about off-limits areas and their animal residents’ quiet confinement, but you’ll find these friendly folks to be quite accommodating about helping you plan your wedding in their wide open spaces and rustic places.

If you love the idea of unique settings like the farm, the art gallery or the museum, but not for your wedding…they could be the home to your engagement party, bridal shower or rehearsal dinner. Smaller-scale celebrations may be better for more intimate settings.

What are your ‘write-ins’ for unique wedding locales? We’d love to hear your ideas, or stories about your wedding.