When we started looking at venues, we had a spreadsheet. Not because we're organised — though we are — but because the choice felt too big to keep in our heads. So we made a spreadsheet with columns for: capacity, indoor/outdoor, catering flexibility, distance from where most people live, and "do we want to take a photo here."
That last column turned out to matter more than anything else.
The castle
The first place we visited was a small castle in the south. Stone walls, a courtyard, a chapel next door, a list of approved caterers longer than my arm. It was objectively beautiful. The kind of place where you stand in the entrance hall and immediately start composing the wedding video in your head.
We walked out and talked about it for two days. It was perfect in the way a film set is perfect. But we kept coming back to: this is someone else's idea of a wedding. We wanted something that felt like us, not like we'd hired a backdrop.
The garden
Second was a botanical garden. Gorgeous in summer, less so in any other season. The on-site coordinator was lovely. The price was less lovely. The package included chairs, tables, two hours of "ceremony music" by a string quartet, and a hard cutoff at 11pm because of a noise ordinance we hadn't been told about.
"Hard cutoff at 11pm" was the line that did it. We like dancing. We're not sorry about it.
The barn
The barn is on a small farm about an hour's drive from where we live. There's a field, a barn with a wooden floor that's seen better days, a courtyard with string lights already hung, and a kitchen that's not big enough for a caterer but is big enough for the friends who volunteered to cook.
There's also no curfew. The owner said "the neighbours are a kilometre away and they like us." We said yes the same evening.
What we picked, in a list
- Capacityabout 60 people, which is roughly the number of humans we'd actually like to see us get married
- Vibewooden, slightly dusty, easy to put fairy lights in
- Cookingwe cook, with help. nobody is wearing a white jacket
- Dancinguntil the playlist runs out or our knees give up, whichever comes first
- Costless than the castle, more than the garden, exactly the right amount for us
That's it. No dramatic ending. We just picked the place that felt most like a barn full of people we like, and stopped second-guessing.