Planning a UK Blessing from New Zealand - so many venues!!!! How to shortlist!

Could you send each venue an email (bcc if there are too many!) asking the same questions - explain when you'll be here, what you want, etc, then see who gives the best answers?

Welcome Amy. One of my brides is planning her wedding in the UK from NZ too so I'll send this link to her now and hope she can help.

Thanks, I may well do that, or have my sister do it from Yorkshire, she's very keen to help being chief bridesmaid, and so far both her suggestions and my suggestions are very in tune she organised most of her own wedding rather than rely on a planner in 2011 as well, but it is slightly different in this case as there is no paperwork or legal stuff to sort out.

Hi Amy,

Welcome to hitched! I'm the bride DW mentioned above, I'm currently planning a UK wedding from Auckland right now!

We relied on parents to help with the venue choice. I spent a few weeks online shortlisting places just by googling the location we wanted and the type of venue, checking out blogs and forums and then emailed them all to enquire about prices. None of them increased their prices because we were in NZ and we told them all the deal. Once we got down to 6 places we sent my parents along to look at them. Unfortunately none of them were quite right but by this time my mum had a good idea of what we wanted so started looking and found the venue we eventually booked. We're famous at our venue now for being the couple in NZ who booked without even seeing the venue in person!!

If you can use family or friends to help you with the venue search then you'll be ok from there.

All planning after that has been a breeze, all the suppliers I've found have been happy to discuss details over email with the odd phone call which I just arrange in advance because of the time difference. Have a look at the suppliers on here and check out some wedding blogs to get recommendations.

If you need any other advice I'm more than happy for you to message me on here

Hello!

I am planning a wedding in SW France from the UK and had similar problems finding the right venue and had no idea where to start.

I went google crazy for a couple of weeks and emailed over 40 venues for availability and pricing. I drew up a checksheet for each one (saddo I know) to work out an estimate of cost, and scored it on suitability / location / facilities /how pretty it was! I was amazed at how much the pricing varied. There were some I initially discounted because the meal was >70Euros pp, but when I worked out the total it was cheaper than others, due to exclusivity fees / hire fees etc all being so wildly different. That helped us to shortlist it down to 3 and then to 1 venue!! We then asked my future inlaws to have a look around and make sure it wasn't next to a landfill site or something!!

Also check out trip advisor for reviews. There was one venue that was top of the list but had some damning reviews from previous weddings that totally put us off.

If it makes you feel better, we found finding the venue by far the most stressful part, after that everything else falls into place. The venue you choose will most definitely help you with recommended suppliers etc too

Good luck with it all! x

Now that is a good idea, I am getting so confused organising my daughter's wedding I feel like giving up and asking her to get someone else to help her.

Thanks for all the replies! All our family are in the UK so we aren't short of helpers thankfully! I have been going a hit google crazy and have also a list of criteria to mark against lol but over the next month we should be right. It's strange but I am not at all worried about suppliers as we do have contacts still in the UK we trust, it is just nailing the venue really, I already have a good idea about the decorations music and food.

As we will already be married in NZ I was also thinking about alternative ceremonies that is purely us and not at all fitting the traditional norms. It is so exciting and also not a little daunting! Good to hear your experiences though, thank you