Choosing A Wedding Location

One of the keys to a stress-free wedding is making decisions in an efficient order. By choosing the geographic location (not necessarily the venue) first, couples can take a big first step toward streamlining the planning process. By starting with the wedding location, the venue, catering, entertainment, and many other decisions are narrowed down to the locally available choices. Picking the wedding location can help turn a forty page list of vendor options into a four page list, fast.

Where do you live?

If you live in an area they enjoy, it can often be easiest to simply stay put. Getting married in the local area makes it simpler to meet with vendors, find friends-of-friends for vendors, and check out location options in person.

Where do your guests live?

Since many people have networks of friends and families that span the globe, choosing a convenient location for the majority of guests may be a good move. For instance, my family and most of my and my husband’s friends live in San Francisco and Los Angeles, while his family lives in Pennsylvania. We chose to get married in Monterey, a small resort town approximately equidistant to LA and SF, yet close enough to major airports that the PA relatives could get there easily. This allowed everyone to have a mini-destination trip, while not requiring taxing travel and high trip expenses for most of our guests.

Are there any significant places to you?

Nearly every couple has some place that is important to the relationship- a hometown, the site of a first trip together- that can be a viable option for a wedding. Choosing a location that has a romantic significance can help personalize the wedding, making it unique to your life together.

How’s the weather?

This question goes hand-in-hand with our next section on choosing the wedding date. If a bride or groom is dead set on marrying in a particular season, take a look at the historic weather patterns for the regions under consideration. An outdoor wedding in November might be totally feasible in San Diego, but highly risky in Seattle.