With many more weddings now taking place at alternative venues, it’s worth having some pertinent questions to hand when you are on the look out for the perfect place to get married.

Here is a list of questions that you may want to ask when choosing your wedding venue:

• Is the date we want available?
• How many people do you cater for, both for the wedding breakfast and the evening reception?
• Will there be any other weddings on the same weekend?
• Have you ample car parking facilities?
• Can confetti be thrown inside and outside the venue?
• Do you allow lit candles?
• Is there the option of having a marquee or part of the wedding taking place outside?
• What time can we have access to the rooms/facilities for decoration purposes etc?
• Have you got samples of menus and wine lists including prices?
• Can we supply the wine?
• Have you got a cake stand?
• Do you have a master of ceremonies who will direct guests and organise the wedding order of service?
• Have you got a detailed price list?

Your venue choice is one of the most difficult decisions you will have to make, alongside who to invite and who to disappoint.

We have only just finished the Christmas festivities, but if you are planning to get married in 2011 your celebrations will be only just about to start.

Planning a wedding can be a daunting task, but if you are meticulous in your plans and you get a little help along the way, the arrangements will go along swimmingly. If you have a spring wedding planned, it’s time to make sure all your plans are finalised. This means that final venue checks, attendance checks and itinerary checks will need to be made at sometime in early January or February.

If you have adopted the traditional approach, to only send the wedding imitations about six weeks before your big day, you may still be finalising numbers and making the difficult decision who will attend the wedding breakfast and who will miss out and have to be invited to the evening only. It’s becoming more common however to send the invitations much earlier, so you may already have your responses.

It’s always worth going to the venue a few times between now and the wedding day so there are no surprises in store, it’s also worth speaking to the venue dresser or the florist a few weeks before too. If you leave everything until the last minute, the ensuing panic that will strike a couple of weeks before you get married may spoil your enjoyment of the special occasion.