Why you should ALWAYS ask about other booked events at your wedding venue

Comments on Why you should ALWAYS ask about other booked events at your wedding venue

1. i have to state, this post amuses me to no end, because I’ve been on the other end of this; working security for a fetish con, in the same hotel they’re having a wedding at!! it’s a bit of a nightmare for con security too, trying to keep attendees away from wedding guests.

   and having to station someone in the elevators to make sure people wore clothes when not in playspaces stretched us a bit thin. 😉

   if it does happen to your wedding, please don’t freak at the con/other event staff or attendees just for being there; it’s not their fault either, and they’d probably MUCH rather you weren’t overlapping their event also!

2. I was on the other end of a wedding-other event matchup a few years back. We have a very large (5,000+ attendees) Earth Day celebration in a local park every year in April. There is a grotto that the city rents out in the park for weddings. (You can see where I’m going here.)

   Long story short- neither group knew of the other rental so it made an interesting wedding background for that couple. Thankfully the Earth Day board was able to accommodate their guests as best we could. Hopefully they liked the open-air music we had playing that day…..

3. Vendors should also be aware of everything going on at the venue. We had another wedding going on at our venue that no one had told us about. (In fact, we were told that they usually did not book more than one event in a night.)

   When my new husband and I arrived 10 minutes into our reception, we saw all our guests waiting in the lobby. We’d sent some friends over early to de corate for us and one of the told us, “We’re not allowed upstairs yet. Your florist was late.” “Uhh…we don’t have a florist.”(Evidently the paper flowers that I’d spend days making, along with the fact that a florist was never mentioned in my decoration instructions didn’t make an impression on my friends, but that’s another story) The florist for the OTHER wedding was late, didn’t bother to check in with anyone, and just went up to my reception and started setting up flowers that we didn’t ask for. So we had to wait while they cleared the flowers out before we could go up. And they actually left some by mistake, so I can only imagine what happened with the other couple’s reception.

4. We were THRILLED to have dinosaur fossils at our wedding ceremony in 2012, but it would have been nice if we’d known that ahead of time! (And by ahead of time, I mean, when we booked the venue)

   Secondarily, as someone who attends burlesque conferences frequently, it’s always entertaining to me to see wedding guests wondering who these scantily clad people are wandering around the hotel. I had a tiny flower girl ask me why we were all dressed up too, once.

   So yes, finding out what is going on at your venue = smart!

5. But really, what do you do when you find out that the location you carefully picked out is also holding a (fill-in-the-blank with something that is completely not what you were looking for) and they booked it AFTER you signed…?

   • I don’t know if this would be paranoid, but perhaps doing the occasional Google search for the venue throughout the months leading up to your wedding would help you spot upcoming events. Then if you see something on the same date, call the venue and ask for an explanation of how they’ll accommodate you both (and then get it in writing).

     I suppose you could also get something in writing in the contract about other events before signing so that you have some assurance.

     • This is good advice. I just want to add that when you ask how they plan to accommodate both events, you should make sure you understand the layout of the venue. Usually if they have space for two or more events, they have enough to space to keep you well away from the other event. But you *must* be clear that such a thing is possible, as well as understand that there will likely still be a small amount of crossover. If it’s a hotel with an attached convention center, you will almost certainly see cosplayers (or whatever sort of event attendees apply to your situation) in every part of the hotel.

       Whether you want to change venues should depend more on the event, though. The moment you see something is double-booked, do your research. If it’s a fetish con, most likely your guests would be uncomfortable (this applies to furry conventions as well). If it’s a music convention or festival, make sure there are no concerts near your space, and also that there will be no hallway jamming or impromptu concerts in the public spaces. If it’s a gaming convention, well… how much do you want a girl cross-playing as Link, playing Saria’s Song on an Ocarina in the hallway outside your ceremony? Because I’ve seen that recently, and while I thought it was awesome, the bride in question was a bit upset.

       This can go the other way too. If you’re having a costume/theme wedding, or maybe just something very non-traditional, you might want to check to make sure there are no religious gatherings or stodgy business events happening on your big day. Obviously if you’re doing a church wedding, you should expect some religious crossover, but for those who go out of their way to have a secular ceremony far from steeples and crosses, this can be a problem. And no matter what part of spectrum you fit onto, if groups from opposite ends of it are triple-booked with you, it’s likely to be a big problem. One of the conventions I worked this past winter had double-booked our anime convention (~15,000 attendees) with a very conservative Jewish young leaders conference. When one of the worst fights of the weekend started between the two groups, a poor bride and two guests were caught in the middle of it all.

       Oh, and don’t just check the date of your actual wedding, but at least 2 days before and after. Also, check *all* hotels, convention centers, and arenas in the immediate vicinity; big events can overflow a lot more than you’d expect.

       • “Oh, and don’t just check the date of your actual wedding, but at least 2 days before and after. Also, check *all* hotels, convention centers, and arenas in the immediate vicinity; big events can overflow a lot more than you’d expect. ”

         This!!
         If you’re expecting a fair number of out of town guests, check hotel prices before you book you wedding venue, and then look into hotel blocks shortly thereafter. We changed the date of our wedding after realizing that a major event was happening in our city on date option 1, and that hotel rooms were much cheaper 2 weeks later on option 3, compared to option 2. I called around when we were selecting the date, and I should have arranged for the hotel block right then. It would have been cheaper and in a better location than what we ended up with 2 months later when I finally arranged it.

6. There can be an upside too though! My wedding venue is an arts space, and they had an event the night before our wedding. It was stressful not to be able to get into the venue until a handful of hours before I had to start hair and make-up, BUT it turned out the party the night before had left a bunch of decorations, so we reworked them a touch and re-used them for our party. Which totally rocked!

7. We got married on Earth Day, back in 1997. Our venue was on the same University campus, only a few blocks from where the park is located that would have hosted the Earth Day festivities. There wouldn’t have been much clash, but parking and traffic would have been a nightmare for my guests, especially since the reception was a mile away, downtown. So they would have had difficulties with parking and traffic TWICE. But, it ended up being a cool rainy day, and the Earth Day festivities were postponed. So parking ended up being easy-peasy. I doubt any bride was as thrilled to have rain on her wedding!

   • It was indeed good luck for you to have rain on your wedding day! 🙂

8. When my son was about 12, he played Travel A ice hockey. One weekend we arrived at the hotel to discover that all of the other floors had been booked by a Swingers convention. Yep, 20 twelve-year-old boys lodged in the same hotel as several HUNDRED swingers swapping bodily fluids. My mind still explodes (pun intended) thinking about the pure idiocy of the hotel manager who thought this would be perfectly A-ok. A couple dads volunteered to spend the whole night guarding the exits in the hallway to make sure the curiosity/hormone Molotov cocktail didn’t overtake the tenuous good judgement of prepubescent boys who were scarily curious about what all the hoopla was about.

   • We had that happen once at a BDSM/fetish/Leather event I volunteered at. They booked a high school cheerleading convention for the same weekend. We, being the kinky crowd, were actually as freaked out as I imagine the parents were. We didn’t want a bunch of munchkins running into things they ought not see. Apparently after the kinky con was over, so many pervs e-mailed the organizers wanting to prevent this from happening again that they immediately moved our con date. So, that kind of experience can be traumatic for pervs, too. Lol

9. Here’s a note no one has mentioned… If you expect exclusivity, you will need to PAY. I’m a former Catering Manager, and nothing made me crazier than demanding couples who thought they should have the entire hotel for their special day. Obviously the catering team does their best to keep certain groups apart, but at the end of the day a wedding is one piece of business.. Some of these other groups are monthly or annual bookings that bring in much more revenue than weddings do.

   Most hotels are willing to give you private space but if you want to make sure the space is 100% yours, you’ll be expected to compensate them for potential lost business.

   • Amen to that Trish! Exclusivity comes at a price! I am also in the business of wedding and conference planning. I have noticed an increase over the past 6 years of any group – wedding, conference, or otherwise – to behave as if they “own” the space they are “renting” from us. If they are not willing to pay to book out the entire facility (most are not willing), they are just another guest and should behave accordingly. I also try to inform my guests on both sides of what is going on (on and off-site) and all our staff attempt to guide guests around events as appropriate but unfortunately some folks are just in their own little bubble and don’t seem to notice or care! Some funny coincidences we have had: War of 1812 celebrations/reenactments taking place at an off site venue about 200 steps from a Canadian/US wedding; group of friends doing a themed costume party the same day as a wedding. Their theme: Tacky Brides! All groups were informed and quite happy in the end. The Canadian/US couple even incorporated the 1812 into their theme…

10. We had a fet party booked on the same night as our wedding. In a venue that kinda really doesn’t have space for multiple simultaneous events. Heh. Good thing we’re on their email list, I tell you what.

    Like people said above- It’s worth googling your venue or following them on social media to see just what else might be going on. They likely can’t promise exclusivity without a massive hike in price, but they can likely help you mitigate exposure between the events.

    We emailed the folks hosting the fet night and let them know that we were double booked. And worked it out even before we had to get the venue involved. Whew!

11. The good thing about our venue was that it couldn’t possibly hold more than one event, so when we booked our wedding, we knew we were the only thing on that day. As a historic site, by the time we even got to picture time, it was closed to the public.

    If someone had crashed our reception I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. I probably would have gotten them a drink (open bar, we supplied the bottles, so not a big deal) and sent them on their way.

12. Again I AM SO LUCKY! I managed to find a local venue that not only is one event at a time; but they’re almost exclusively weddings!!!! The only thing that may be a little ‘distasteful’ is the local adult super center is two doors down and there are bars all around. But because the venue is closed to the public I shouldn’ t have any drunk/S&M people wandering into my wedding 🙂

13. When we booked our wedding venue, we discussed with the manager having our ceremony inside in front of a big stone fireplace if it rained. Unbeknownst to us, after we booked they scheduled a bridal shower to take place in that space! When I woke up and it was raining on our wedding day, I wondered why the venue was so gung ho with their “It’ll clear! We can still do it outside! REALLY!!!” talk. Turns out that, having double booked our “rain out space” they had NO backup plan, and if they didn’t manage to have our wedding outside, they would have made us get married on the dance floor in the corner of the dining room where our reception was (which meant most of our guests wouldn’t have been able to see). I didn’t find out about this until over a year later, as my husband did all the freaking out at the venue manager privately while I was getting my hair done. Happily, the rain did clear and we did get married outside as planned and it was perfect and beautiful. But had I known that “corner dining room dance floor” was our rain out option, I would have chosen another venue!

14. Even if there is enough space, there are accommodation plans, and the other group isn’t obviously out of line with the atmosphere you want for your wedding, I’d suggest that people brace themselves for other people to be jerks. A sci-fi/fantasy con I attend experienced this last year, though no weddings were involved. We’ve had a Catholic convention booked at the same time for several years, but there (unexpectedly, really) haven’t been any problems. Last year, there was a third group gathering based around a cultural identity that I can’t recall, but not obviously problematic. Utter disaster. It ended up looking like Jersey Shore on the West Coast. The older adults were fine, but the young adults were noisy in the hallways, tried to crash our parties, and scared a lot of our members through harassing them. It was awful.

15. crud. this article just reminded me that one of the venues i’m looking at is part of an outside fest/convention/flea market area that usually hosts an environmental fest around the time of our wedding date. and since the venue space is outside as well… looks like i have some cross-checking to do!

16. I was fortunate that the event planner at my venue was very sensitive to us and our needs. When we told her it was a victorian Steampunk theme wedding, she reminded us that Dickens is the first weekend in December EVERY YEAR. We thought about having it coincide with the steamy weekend of fun. We changed our minds when we realized what a nightmare parking was going to be for our guests. Since our venue sells parking for Dickens, they couldn’t promise us there would be any parking available for our guests. It all turned out for the best. I had my bachelorette at Dickens, which turned out to be a really warm weekend (thank God I hadn’t planned to be wearing a wedding dress that day). The following weekend, we got married on a nice dry cool evening when there weren’t a bunch of drunken debauchees in goggles and top hats wandering through our dry reception trying to get to the lot where their car was parked.

17. If it really matters to you, usually the only way to ensure you have the whole space to yourself is… to pay for it, sadly!! Luckily our venue can only host one event a day. But check your contract before signing about exclusivity rights!

18. Just because your venue is single-event-only doesn’t mean the neighboring venues are!

    This happened to me. My sweet, historical, secret garden venue was hidden right in the middle of downtown, next to a couple of clubs. The woman who booked our wedding checked with the clubs before we put down a deposit to make sure they weren’t going to have any outdoor music playing for the Sunday night we had in mind. She checked again a month out, before we sent the invitations. She checked a third time the week before our wedding and still they gave very non-committal, “I don’t think anything is going on,” answers.

    Four days before my wedding, I got a weird feeling and checked online. Sure enough, BOTH clubs were hosting outdoor bands the same night as my wedding as part of “Chaos In Tejas,” an annual all-weekend punk/hardcore/metal/hip hop/garage rock music festival. One of those clubs had been selling tickets to the festival since BEFORE we booked our wedding venue. Even diehard metal fans would have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the warring screamo bands scheduled to play. Upon discovering this, I calmly reviewed our options, devised a plan, contacted everyone, and then balled my eyes out for a solid hour.

    Since it was June in Texas, hosting an outdoor event before noon or after sunset are your only humane options. Since we planned the whole wedding in less than 60 days, we were relying on friends and a lot of DIY, so we only really had one vendor to worry about rescheduling. (If we’d hired a caterer, I have no idea what they would have done.) We lost about a quarter of our guests who couldn’t make it with the 12-hour time shift. We still hung up twinkle lights because, dammit, I wanted twinkle lights.

    It ended up being absolutely beautiful, more perfect than I could have hoped for — but I still wish that I’d done some research on my own about the neighboring venues before planning the wedding. I think the stress of it all shaved a few years off of everyone’s lives. I recommend that anyone planning a wedding double check to see what events are going on in your town the day you intend to marry and to plan accordingly.

19. Years ago I was the one who booked the weddings at Knox College on the UofT campus. It can be a tough gig you can only know after a summer on the job. Coordinating your wedding with other events can be nerve-wracking. I’ve seen everything from a medieval festival on the green (luckily the music drifting in to the chapel was complimentary to the theme of the wedding) to movie crews and their equipment get in the way of my best efforts to keep my brides and grooms informed. On the other hand I’ve had irate locations managers complain to me of wedding bells sounding in the background of their shoots. It’s a good idea to speak to staff and browse libraries, churches and store windows for event advertisements in the neighborhood where your wedding is booked and always have a back-up plan.

20. While I would like to recommend a space like a church hall, event mishaps happen here, too.
    And although I have very fond memories of my wedding, our traditional church wedding had 2 events to be mindful of.

    Firstly, we had to schedule our ceremony and reception around the possibility of the church also saving time for funerals on the same day. Luckily, a morning wedding, with a church hall reception that ended by 3PM was perfect for the hubs & me.

    But secondly, we did not find out until the day of that the city capitol building (right next door to our church) was having a biker rally/protest that closed all the nearby streets that day. So while the locals easily found their way around, people who were trying to navigate by GPS found the maze of one-ways and blocked roads rather difficult. More than a few people ended up coming in to the ceremony late. (We had an awesome officiant who welcomed late-comers with love and sympathy.)
    The upside to this biker rally: completely closed-streets that let us get some really great photos of the wedding party and the capitol building, and some great city-scape shots with an urban feel.

21. My wedding (in less than a week!) is located in a pay-to-enter garden, and across the pond from where our ceremony will be held is an open-to-the-public park. While we have our little area cordoned off during the ceremony, I’m actually quite looking forward to the random passer-bys wandering through. I was told to expect a great deal of clapping & a few photos from strangers.

    But it does remind me of the time I was at a Zombiewalk (with about 2000 people dressed up like zombies) at the Vancouver Art Gallery… and a wedding party showed up for pictures. Errr… well, I hope they enjoyed the pictures with lurking zombies in the background. (I know I would have!)

    • I got married in Disney World, on the beach at the Polynesian Resort. The beach isn’t private, so people could still walk by and watch us from their rooms, but at the same time, Disney Fairy Tale Weddings will keep people off the beach as best they can. We had several people watching our ceremony from their rooms (they clapped and cheered for us at the end!) and even have a photo of a shirtless man who was out for a morning run jogging by after our ceremony!

22. Almost has a meltdown reading the weekend paper a week before my wedding to find a Bagpipe&Drummer Battle of the bands was advertised to happen at the same time on the lawn outside the place we booked a year ago for our reception! They would be close enough than it would overpower any PA announcements/music or just general conversation. And i checked we were not double booked the month before.
    A few furious phone calls that monday morning(reception co-ordinatior who didnt know,venue hire manager,event organiser ect) and it appears a new person didn’t follow procedure related to noise control(must be advertised a month before) and council approval(that local council has banned bagpipes in public places for years) and it got moved. Phew! crisis averted. Although arriving to a nice dirge would have been fun considering the Mr. is in a kilt

23. When I went to the 2012 Discworld convention, there was a large Hindu wedding going on in the same hotel. One of the guests was approached by a drunk douchy wedding guest who said ‘Wow, look at those freaks!’ said guest flashed her con badge and drunk douche moved on 😉

    • We had the same thing happen when I attended a Xena: Warrior Princess convention in New Jersey many years ago. There was a Hindu wedding booked on the same day as the con’s costume contest. I should probably mention that this was immediately following the season where Xena and Gabrielle went to India. As you can imagine, the con-goer dressed as Kali, the nine armed Hindu goddess didn’t go over well.

24. I just got married this weekend and would have welcomed a con to the venue lol. Instead we had the Red Hatter ladies. Now most of them were well behaved but there were a few who felt like THEY owned the venue and tried to boss us around (pre wedding day).
    I was very happy that no one made a big deal out of things and everything went smoothly, i would have DIED if there was a fetish-fest there though lol!

25. We had a similar freakout. We booked our venue, Celebrant and photographer all about 15 months out, as our wedding is in spring at peak wedding season. The vendors were all stoked to deal with super organized couple too. On the date, exactly a year before, we decide to do a drive by. To find out our site for our low key relaxed outdoor rural wedding has a direct line of sight to the main stage of a hardcore dance festival! We confirmed the dates for the next year and were able to bump it back a day, but the Sunday means the venue has a curfew of 10pm, but it was our best option really.

26. I vend at the largest furry convention in the world – every year we pretty much take over downtown Pittsburgh. And even though the convention itself is in the convention center, we are spread out over about seven hotels in the surrounding area. The hotel lobbies are a popular location for general hanging. There are inevitably two to four weddings that happen in the hotel I stay at, so I always wonder if the brides know ahead of time.

    Moral of that story – even if your hotel isn’t hosting a convention, it might have a pretty large room block reserved for it, and you might end up with furries traipsing through the lobby and weirding out your guests. 😉

27. My wedding picnic is going to be sharing the park (across the street) with one of the largest art festivals in the US. Fortunately our little square of park is surrounded by trees, so we should have a bit of privacy. We joke that our reception will have 100,000 guests. On the plus side if anyone gets bored, there’s something they can go do. (I wonder if anyone will notice if the bride wanders off to go check it out…)

28. I was at a convention when I noticed a wedding going on in the same hotel we were staying at. I was just passing by with a friend and glancing over when I’m assuming the brides friend stopped us, asked us what was the get up for, and insisted we be apart of the wedding photo booth. It was very unexpected but exciting. I got to keep a copy of the photo. I still wonder what the bride would think once she saw me and my friend as random faces in her photos.

29. I wouldn’t mind at all. I can’t expect a large hotel or venue to only host my event. My family and friends aren’t sticks in the mud, so they probably would have a ball with other events going on such as Comic cons or dinosaur fossils. It would be fuel for our jokes, if there were a fetish con! We are a fun loving bunch, not ones to get upset over things like that. There’s no reason to be, I wont waste time being upset over things I can’t change or things I don’t understand 🙂

30. We just found out that the village we are getting married in is also hosting a zombie walk the same day – we are pretty excited about it!

    • That’s so awesome! You should do some fun photos with attendees if your photographer is charismatic enough to rope folks into it. 🙂

      • We mentioned it to our photographer and his face just about lit up – can’t wait!

31. I was working at a hotel doing a murder mystery at the same time as 2 other weddings, which would have been ok if I wasn’t dress up as a child bride from the 80s and i had serious dress envy when I saw the other brides. O and if one of their guests hadn’t discovered “the body”, and totally freaked out thinking someone actually had been murdered during the other weddings first dance. Yep that was interesting!! She needed a few brandys after that!

32. I had a bit of an awkward one. A huge funeral reception was scheduled at my venue (obviously not planned far in advance). There were tons of people and very little close parking for myself and my 80 guests. There were very few event staff to be found during the reception (except for waiters and the bartender); plus, the food was the worst I’d ever had it there. So, sometimes you just can’t do much about it… :/ Not to be insensitive or anything… but that’s what happened. We all still had a lovely day though!

33. This is good advice, and definitely on the list of things to double and triple check. I hope I’ve avoided this problem, but even if I haven’t it, I think it’ll work out. We picked a small local cultural community center as our venue. Though they have a pub in the front, they only allow Celtic folk and rock bands to play there, which is what we’re booking for the ballroom anyway 😛

34. I was hesitating between two venues. What made me choose was that one only had room for one event at a time and the other always had two. The rooms were separate and had separate parking lots, the guests from both events could never mingle. But once the music started…
    For a little more money, we were sure to have privacy… and music to our taste!

35. my cousin had her wedding at a beautiful country club, which was right next to the Midwest amphitheatre which had a sold out concert. It took the FOB two hours to go 1 mile. It postponed much the reception. It was just frustrating for the FOB because he knew it was all postponed because of the traffic, and people left right after dinner to beat the concert traffic out. Ask the venue questions about other events!

36. Sometimes it is unavoidable, and I recommend also considering the surrounding area.

    Our October wedding last year was scheduled for the week after a local Zombie Walk that occurs yearly from the boardwalk outside our reception venue to a main downtown street. Well, it WAS until a freak storm warning (which did not even pan out) caused the organizers to reschedule the event for our wedding day. I am so glad our venue coordinator had the patience of a saint and got me through the last-minute freak-out when we found out a week before the wedding.

    Luckily, I like zombies, so our guests thought it was kind of perfect. Guests who showed up early took advantage of the photo ops with the undead walk attendees before cocktail hour. We had to change our photo session location (twice. Plan B was the next town over which was having a street fair! Oops!) but in the end it’s just a funny story to add to the day!

37. Soo.. this conversation is so appealing to me because my wedding in Detroit is the same day as the largest anime/ gaming convention in the U.S.
    Our actual ceremony and reception are in a different neighborhood of the city, so we won’t be near the madness, but the hotel block is downtown.
    My fiancé really wanted to get married downtown and unfortunately, that was the only day and venue that worked within our budget without having to wait at least 3 more months to get married. I had no idea that 30,000 people come to Detroit for this when we booked that day.
    The biggest problem is that hotel room prices and uber/ taxi rates sky rocket when large events like this take place. I feel so bad for my guests, I don’t want them to have to pay $189 a night for a hotel room (which is the cheapest rate I’ve found without having to send them to a one or two star hotel). And I also want them to be able to navigate around the city without having to deal with insane traffic. We can’t afford to provide transportation for every one of our guests.
    I’ve considered changing the date, but my fiancé is against it. I just want to be considerate of my friends’ budgets and stress levels.
    So yes, wedding planning is stressing me out!

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