Suppliers - local to me or the venue?

I personally do not use Instagram but it is one source to use. It has been known for some venues to charge a fee to be "recommended" but looking at a venues supplier list can be helpful.

A good way to find photographers who have worked at the venue before is to try googling your venue with the word wedding photography or photos and then look at google images and see what come up.

Something I forgot to add. When researching photographers and looking at images is to be mindful of fake couples -- otherwise known as a "styled shoot". Theses are usually with models playing the part and then MUA and hairstylists all get together at a venue and set up shots to look like a wedding. Obviously a lot easier to do than a real life wedding and so will have no baring on how good they would be at a real wedding.

Just to jump on this because I saw your comments about instagram - that was how I found my photographer! I didn’t only look at my venue’s page, but also searched its hashtag followed by the word ‘wedding’ (ie #venuenamewedding ) until I found photos I liked that were tagged with the photographer, and that’s how I found him! I liked that I could see what his work looks like in my venue, and he wasn’t too expensive like lots of the ones I’d found through more official channels.

You're not going to need to have a lot of meetings with suppliers, and you could easily organise 2 or 3 in one day to save having to travel too much. But most of it can be done by email, phone, zoom etc. Booking suppliers that are a long way from the venue is going to mean you are likely to get hit with excess travel charges. Suppliers should be ok with delivering cake, flowers etc to the venue themselves, and again, it's obviously going to be easier if things don't have to travel so far. I guess the only thing to consider is if you are getting ready at home, you would want your bouquet delivered to your home address but if you are getting ready at or near your venue, then that problem is dealt with.

Regarding recommendations, I'd check to see if there is a local Facebook community page and join that to ask for recommendations. I used to live in an area that was very popular for weddings, and I'd often see posts from brides-to-be asking for recommendations for local florists, photographers etc. The advantage of social media is that you are getting recommendations from real people. If one person tells you a photographer is great, it might be their relative - if 20 people tell you that person is great, it's probably true!