Venue short list

The top venues ended up being:

1. Mansion House, York. Absolutely stunning building, with very helpful staff who replied to all my ridiculous emails. You can't have a DJ in the house itself, but you can use the Guildhall behind for your evening do. Outside caterers, but you can choose your own or use their preferred ones. Our second choice venue.
2. Air Museum, Elvington. Thinking outside the box. Also very helpful by email. This only slid down the list because it was hard to imagine what space we would be able to use, and how it would actually work for us. A time when being present would have been helpful!
3. Villa Farm, Wigginton. Again lovely emails. They have a series of cottages you/your guests can stay in, but we couldn't find an indoor space that would work for our meal, and would have ended up with a marquee.
4. Thirteen Thirty One, York. Art deco style venue with its own cinema. Good prices, good size, flexible about what we wanted. Unfortunately they changed the date of their open day, but Inspector Gadget wasn't as keen on the decor as I was anyway. 
5. The Stone Trough Inn, Kirkham Abbey. Looked nice from the website, but unfortunately follow up emails never arrived. Would also have given us transport/accommodation issues. 

and the winner?

By miles and miles, The Old Lodge in Malton. It's gorgeous, quirky, has parking, rooms, award winning food, is 25 minutes from the church, and is reasonably priced. It was no contest really - which made for an easy decision (after only one venue viewing - thanks 'rents!). Pictures soon...

The big venue hunt

It really was a big hunt, and a large part of that was because we didn't want a big venue. Anything with a minimum guest number of more than 50 was out.  I have a scrawled list of 43 venues, which was long-listed down to 32. There were others which we merely glanced at the websites of, and then immediately discounted. I reckon we looked at around 75 venues.

I've read loads of forums and blogs where brides-to-be say they viewed dozens of venues. I have no idea why. Obviously we couldn't visit venues, and so adopted an approach that worked with that. But our approach was very simple, and could be used by any couple.

We set out a list of essential and ideal criteria. We did hours of google searching, with a variety of search terms (the best one was actually "pubs with function rooms" - it opened up a whole range of options that we didn't see when we looked the first time), to get the list of 43. Then we looked for the information we needed on their website. Once we had that, we sent them an email explaining that we were in NZ, asking them to answer any remaining questions, and finding out if they were available for April 2013 (we decided march was a bit optimistic!).

Criteria

Essential

1. Has to seat 50 people for dinner
2. Has to allow a DJ
3. Has to have "character"

Ideal

1. Within 30 minutes of the church
2. Parking (actually a major problem in York)
3. Exclusive access, or at least no other weddings

I sent 21 emails, and did not get 21 replies. A couple of obscure places (we were trying to think outside the box) didn't reply, which is understandable. Hotel du Vin have no excuse though. Others replied with comments that clearly showed they hadn't read our email - please see website/here is our brochure/please call us to arrange a visit. If you can't even read an email, you are not being trusted with my wedding. 

A surprising number would not allow DJs. This will be linked to the fact that most of the city's buildings are listed, but it ruled out a lot of places, including our favourite restaurant Melton's Too.

Others were too small, or wouldn't give us access until very late in the day. An early front runner was the barns at The Maize Maze. It's in the next village to my parents, looked very cool, and they were really flexible. They were also fully booked, and didn't bother to tell my mum that over the phone. 

We had a short list! A top six, with four in reserve in case of emergency.

Planning a wedding - just like a,b,c?

When attempting any task, it's a good idea to start at the very beginning. In my job, there is a prescribed place to start - all tasks begin with A (for airway, incase you're wondering). In weddings, the prescribed start is not one thing, but a combination of date, location and budget.

Some people will tell you that you must begin with one of these things. For example, you must know what your budget is before you can look at venues. Whilst this is obviously true, working out what your budget is when you have no idea what things cost is actually really difficult.

We started with location. And by that I don't mean venues. We had a much bigger issue to consider - which country should we get married in? We don't have a permanent base currently, and hadn't decided if we were staying in Kiwi Land or going back to Britain. As people who travel a lot, it wouldn't surprise anyone if we decided to get married overseas - the world was our oyster, as the saying goes.

I don't like oysters. And I didn't like making such a big decision. In the end, it came down to two simple things - who we wanted there, and my religious beliefs. Most of our friends and family would have travelled a short distance to be at our wedding, but we felt asking people to travel to the other side of the world was unfair.  We looked seriously at a european ski resort wedding, but that would mean my grandparents couldn't come, and we would have to have a civil ceremony. That was a deal breaker for me - I've always wanted to walk down the aisle, and repeat those well known words.

So it was back to sunny Blighty. Decisions came easily from here - our family are all "up north," so we could go all old-fashioned and get married in my parents village church. Father Nick said he'd be delighted to marry us. The earliest we could realistically arrange a UK wedding for was March 2013. And now we did need a venue...