Looking at a venue before you''re official?

[aliciagirl]

So, I''m usually a LIW board girl, but I thought I would pop over here to ask this question. I know that I''ve read several ladies booked their venue BEFORE they were engaged or very, very soon after. Did you visit the site? What did you say when people asked?

SO and I want a wedding in WV, our home state. I currently live in PA and he lives in OH, so we really don''t make it home very often at the same time and want to take advantage of this time that we do have to look at the venue. We will definitely need to book it well over a year in advance and plan to do it.... oh, the day we get engaged (if we like it *crosses fingers*). We aren''t looking to book anything at this point, but we do need to see rooms in it that aren''t generally open to the public. Do we say we''re engaged and my ring is... off getting sized or something? Say it''s for a parent''s anniversary party? Tell the truth? SO is very, very shy so I am going to have to be the person to speak up about it and I don''t want people thinking we''re crazy.

What did/would you do? Any advice about the situation?

 

[neatfreak]

Honestly? I don''t think anyone will think twice about it. I think you will be more worried about not having a ring than anyone else will. Just do what you need to do. If it makes the most sense to see the venue now, by all means do so! As long as you and your BF are on the same page there is no problem with it at all.

 

[MMM]

yea, you can just say we are looking for a place to get married. period. you don''t need to throw out any titles. and, even if you do say you''re engaged, i think it would take a rude person to then say, "where''s your ring"

i also think if you know you are going to be getting married, by all means start looking. we didn''t look until after we were engaged (a year ago today!) and we originally wanted to get married in april ''08 (so that would have been a year and 4 month from that time) and our choice venue was already booked solid! so, we pushed it to october ''08 (we live in florida so we had to go for the cooler months) which means we will now be engaged for almost 2 years before we are married! not that i mind - i''m just saying it doesn''t hurt to book things early! especially if you are in a big city or a state, like florida, where people tend to flock to to get married.

congratulations on your engagement-to-be! come hang out on this board more often! it''s very addicting and extremely helpful!

 

[violet02]

I knew that booking early was going to be key so we started looking a few months ago. It was very hard to pin my fiancee down to booking a place before he proposed but we worked it out.

I looked at plenty of places pre-engagment. They would say congratulations and I would say thanks and that was it. I never said I wasn''t engaged or anything about a ring etc. I didn''t feel that I had to either. The only person I told I wasn''t engaged yet was the wedding planner who totally understood why we were looking pre-engagement. You have to book things a long ways out so the earlier you can get on top of that the better.

In order for us to get a Saturday at a spot we really like in October of ''08 we wound up being the first one''s in the door to book a private residence that''s going to offer two weddings a year starting in 2008. Otherwise anything else popular was already booked for saturdays OR totally out of our price range.

 

[zoebartlett]

I agree with the others. It''s really no big deal to look at venues before getting engaged, and I don''t think you need to give any explanation to the coordinators you meet with.

 

[DiamanteBlu]

Ditto.

 

[BELLA9280]

ditto

 

[aprilcait]

I agree with the others. Get as much as you can done now so you avoid stressing later.
**crossing my fingers for you!!!**

 

[gtn]

nobody is going to ask if you are engaged or not. I would look and ask if the dates you are considering are available. Even find out what the church calendar looks like if you are doing it in a church.

 

[LaurenThePartier]

I think everyone does things differently - some of us are "planners", and some of us are "procrastinators".

I fall under the "planner" category, and I had an entire wedding booked and paid for before I was even officially proposed to!

Coordinators, especially, understand the time sensitive nature of planning a wedding, so I wouldn''t worry about it.

 

[diamondfan]

My mom had a deposit down on the place before we were officially engaged. I got married at a really gorgeous hotel in Los Angeles that books up really quickly, as it was we has to take a Sunday 8 months away because Saturdays were booked for two years! Hubby thought it was funny, when he found out, at least a little funny...

 

[goldenstar]

FI and I looked at a hotel 5 mos before we were engaged. The coordinator congratulated us and that was it. I wasn''t wearing a ring and it wasn''t a big deal.