By Mariani
In 18 years of weddings at Mariani’s Venue, brides ask me the same question: where do I start? There are so many vendors to hire and so many decisions to make that it feels like everything has to happen at once. It doesn’t. There is an order to it, and when you follow the order, everything else gets easier.
The venue and the catering come first
The two most important things are the venue and the catering. Book them six months to a year before your wedding, and get those two out of the way first — the rest is easier to schedule.
At Mariani’s Venue, the catering is done in-house, so when you book the venue, the catering comes with it — one decision, not two. The ceremony, dinner, reception, and after-party are all here, and we hold only one event at a time, so your wedding is the only wedding that day. Once that is settled, you know your date, you know your place, and you know your food. Everything after that is just filling in the pieces around something that is already solid.
Every vendor asks the same first question
The first thing any vendor wants to know is which venue you are having your wedding at. The location is very important for different vendors. A photographer wants to know the light and the grounds. A DJ wants to know the room and the sound. A florist wants to know the tables and the space. A vendor who has worked your venue before already knows how the day runs there — and a vendor who has never been there has to learn it from scratch.
That is why the venue comes first. Until you have a venue, you do not really have a wedding date or a place, and no vendor can give you a straight answer about anything. Once you have the venue, every other conversation gets shorter and simpler, because the biggest questions are already answered.
Let the venue organizer steer you
After you find your venue, the venue organizer can steer you in the right direction about selecting the other vendors. That is part of what you are paying for — not just a place, but the experience of someone who has done this hundreds of times.
Use their experience and their reputation to find the best vendors to be part of your big day. A venue organizer who has worked with the same vendors for years knows who shows up on time, who does beautiful work, and who takes care of the bride. That knowledge is worth more than any list you will find online, because it comes from watching those vendors work, wedding after wedding.
At Mariani’s Venue, I personally coordinate each wedding, and I keep a hand-picked list of vendors — a DJ, a decorator, an organizer, a photographer, a makeup artist, an officiant, a florist — people with 30 or more years of wedding experience each, who do very good work at a very reasonable price. I take no commission from any of them. The list goes to the bride after she signs her contract, because by then she has already chosen the venue, and now she can choose the rest of her team from people I trust.
The order that works
So here is the order: the venue and the catering first. Then let the venue organizer help you with the rest — the DJ, the director, the photographer, and everybody else. Do it that way and you are not guessing. You are building your day on something solid, with people who know the place and know each other.
Brides come to us from Charlotte, Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Wilmington, from Florence and Dillon in South Carolina, and from right here in Robeson County — and they all get the same thing: one team, one plan, and a day that runs the way it should.
If you are planning your wedding and you want to start in the right place, start with the details. You can get our Ultimate Pricing Guide at https://marianivenue.com/pricing-guide/.
— Mariani
