When you’re planning your wedding or helping a friend to do the same, there might come a point where a split in your research emerges. Do you pursue local leads that you’re aware of because of your time spent living in a particular area, or do you try and find something more generally available but perhaps more sought after as a result?

There’s obviously a balance that you can strike in order to give yourself as many options as possible, but it might be that those getting married have a particular interest in one direction that helps the day to feel more unique to them.

The Benefits of Going Local

The difficult thing about choosing to go for local options is that it’s not something you can often choose for yourself. It’s about networking, knowing people who might have a venue available for a much cheaper price, or already being in contact with a caterer who might be able to provide a discount. When these kinds of circumstances come together, it can be enormously beneficial to keeping your wedding under budget, but going out of your way to seek it out is basically the same as conducting online research.

However, it’s important that you exhaust all of your avenues here before you give up. For example, you might not know anyone who has a field that you can use as the site of your wedding party, but perhaps some of your friends do, or perhaps they know someone who knows someone.

Casting a Wide Net

There is also a middle ground here, where you might know someone who got married recently, someone who can point you in the right direction when it comes to your online research. After all, without a push in the right direction, it can feel as though there are so many possible options that it’s just overwhelming.

Sometimes you can narrow this down yourself. For example, if you’re looking for wedding venues, you can exclude some options based on what you know that you want. If there are certain activities you want to include, or a smaller guest list, you can moderate the size based on that. Additionally, you might choose something based on the tone of the party that you’re trying to create, as well as how formal or casual you want it to be.

What’s Convenient?

With weddings, it’s sometimes tempting to go as big as possible. This might lead many people to host their wedding abroad, and while that might be what they’ve always wanted, it can often create a barrier between them and the guests.

This is a problem that might depend on the finances of those that you’re inviting, but a wedding that’s more convenient to get to for a guest is one that becomes more appealing. If you have a lot of guests who fall outside the range of closest friends and immediate familiar, barriers like having to travel overseas might stop them from going, which is worth bearing in mind.

Jane