Venue Research: The Criteria

I had a lot of fun finding a venue, especially since it was something I did mostly over the internet. I don’t know that I would have found the process very fun if I had visited 14 places as one of my friends did.

Anyway, before we get to the actual venues, here’s a list (yay lists!) of our criteria:

1) It needed to be relatively inexpensive. We are on a tight budget and can not afford $3000 rental fees which appear to be standard at many locations in the area I was looking.

2) The place had to have a warm and cozy feeling.

3) It had to be able to accommodate both a wedding ceremony and a reception in two separate spaces. When my lovely older sister got married last year (see picture below) the ceremony was performed in the same room as the reception with everyone sitting at their tables. While this worked out really well and my sister was happy with it, it's not what I wanted.


(picture by me)

4) It had to fit 100 people comfortably for dinner and dancing. I didn’t want anyone to feel cramped, but I also didn’t want the place to look empty.

5) It could absolutely NOT be a banquet hall. I know that these are exactly perfect for a lot of couples (and are generally very reasonable cost wise), but they were not what we wanted.

6) It had to be somehow related to us and preferably be located in our neighbourhood. This one was really important. The Mr. and I live in Toronto about 5 minutes from the edge of the University of Toronto and we absolutely love it. Even though I’m from Brampton I went to school in Toronto from grade 5 to 11 and then the Mr. and I both attended the U of T for our undergrads and now I work at the University and the Mr. is doing his PhD here. As a result, we are both a lot more attached to Toronto than to Brampton, so we wanted to reflect that by getting married in our neighbourhood.

So that was our criteria. What was yours?