It’s boxing day and after an extremely Merry Christmas sharing the happy news of our engagement with our families, we’re back at the Shaw household enjoying another beautifully cooked festive lunch. It’s now 48hours since I proposed and of those 48 approximately 10 have been spent sleeping (alright there may have been a little snooze after Christmas dinner so maybe 12 spent sleeping); 2 were spent exchanging and playing with presents, and around 34 have been spent talking about the wedding… none stop…what did I let myself in for?
Don’t get me wrong, I knew that proposing would inevitably lead to a wedding, I’m just not sure I realised that within 6 hours of our engagement I would have already been considering my boutonniere… well I say considering, I of course mean nodding whilst it was considered by others…well I say nodding, I mean nodding off. But I was counting cupcakes in my sleep so I reckon that still counts. By the way just what the hell is a boutonniere? I digress.
The current hot topic of conversation is the venue and, as it turns out, my beautiful future wife (whose knowledge of wedding venues of all shapes and sizes is second to none), is a bloomin’ nightmare when it comes to location ideas! Though a proud Yorkshireman I had had my eyes opened to the idea of being married abroad by my brother’s Mauritian wedding and so, though very happy to be married locally, I was also very open to venues outside of the region. Dom on the other hand really wanted a Yorkshire wedding (though she’s not originally from Yorkshire…the whole things’s backwards!). This sounded easy enough;
“Ok great, well what’s your favourite venue?”
“Oh I don’t want to get married anywhere where I’ve photographed a wedding before”.
“O…k… are there any you’ve seen or heard about that you haven’t been to?”
“No I’ve done everywhere around here”.
“…Right”.
I opened up google. And a beer.
It’s not that the venues I’ve photographed aren’t amazing places, it’s just that each wedding I photograph holds a special memory and when I see the venue it resonates with that couple for me; their day, their wedding. I wanted it to be my day, my style, my space. and that meant finding somewhere unique that really captured my imagination, somewhere that would always be my venue. Oh, and somewhere that offered the chance for some amazing wedding photos!!
Sorry to interrupt, but shouldn’t some of those “My’s” read “Our”?
The photos are hugely important to me; it’s what I do after all, but it’s more than that. Despite me being a photographer we have very few pictures of Matt and I together (caused in part, no doubt, by the fact my cameras tend to be pretty expensive and I won’t let anyone else touch them to take the pic for us!) I really want some amazing pro shots of us, and though at this point I had no idea who our photographer might be, I wanted to give them every possible chance for exciting, unique images (as well as be somewhere that was an amazing setting for all the guests!). We were open to anything from churches to empty barns but, most importantly we wanted somewhere unique, fun and preferably EPIC!
Although we were looking at a lot of slightly more unusual venues we hadn’t ruled out using somewhere more orthodox and giving it our own twist. I work as a theatre and events lighting designer and technician and have worked on all kinds of crazy productions in a variety of venues from marquees to theatres to big empty halls that have to be transformed into Hogwarts for the night! Lighting up a space and transforming it with a bit of theatricality was definitely a possibility, though as I and a lot of the guests do this every day for a living I definitely didn’t want my wedding day to feel like work for any of us!
With all that in mind I returned to Google and started my search. As it turns out The North East is full of amazing venues with everything from huge Georgian townhouses to barns to old ruins and gorgeous gardens. Now I’ll let you into a secret: I work in regional theatre and Dom’s a photographer, we are not fabulously wealthy. Our parents were contributing a considerable amount (for which we’re hugely grateful) but we still needed to work to a strict budget. For hours we sat by the fireside, me with my laptop and Dom with her iPad searching through hundreds of possible venues of all shapes and sizes. After 6 hours of solid investigation and about 500 cups of tea I had battled my way through what felt like millions of websites and made a fair old list of possible venues, how many each could cater for, unique qualities, location, style of wedding breakfast etc. Dom in the meantime, as it turned out, had been playing Angry Birds.
Actually it was Doodlejump…
…Which of course makes it all better. Her mum however had been very busy looking at all of the other elements of the wedding and between us we started to work out where the biggest costs lay and get some ideas together of the sorts of venues we wanted to look at.
One thing I would say at this juncture is that on many venue websites this information was surprisingly difficult to find! I must have dismissed 30 – 40 venues because I just couldn’t find the information I was looking for, the biggest one being price! For any wedding venue managers out there reading this post I’m not saying I need the final quote right there in front of me, but PLEASE give me a vague idea of what sort of money we’re talking about! However great your venue is you’re not going to talk me into booking it if it’s £10,000 over my budget… or indeed if it’s just £10,000! That said there are some great venue comparison sites out there that can help you along the way and are often much better at providing the specifics you’re after than the venue’s own websites (Googling “wedding venues” should give you a good start!)
Looking through our list I started to realise just why people say that wedding planning completely takes over their lives! There’s so many different elements: booking the venues, making the guest-list, planning the decorations, finding…you know…clothes and stuff… and above all so much budgeting to do and yet so many new Nintendo based Christmas presents to distract me!! Ok maybe just a QUICK game of Goldeneye… and maybe a little drink would help to focus my mind for more planning…
Vodka Martini – shaken, not stirred.
