Before you sign on the dotted line with your chosen venue, make sure you’ve asked about accommodation for you, your wedding party and guests.
Some wedding venues will allow you exclusive use where you take all the rooms for your wedding, in which case you need to know how many rooms there are and be confident you can fill them, as you will be covering the cost.
If your wedding venue doesn’t have enough rooms to sleep your immediate wedding party, you need to find out the nearest accommodation for them and the logistics of the night before and the night of the wedding. It might be best to confirm the rooms at your venue and rooms at nearby accommodation providers for your wedding party, before you announce the date and location.
For all other guests you need to be mindful of where they’re travelling from. Are the majority travelling a distance where they’ll need to stay over the night or even two nights? If so, it would be best to include a couple of suggestions for your guests to stay along with the wedding invite, so they can arrange their own accommodation.
For a large majority of venues there will always be neighbouring hotels, B&B or self-catering options available however, for those areas where you literally are in the middle of nowhere, you may also wish to consider organising a mini bus or coach for your guests. This can either be covered and organised through yourself or what would be better is asking one of your bridal party to organise this with guests, as you will have enough to organise and pay for on the day itself.
And don’t forget you will always have some guests who are happy to drive no matter where you hold your wedding, so they may even be able to offer lifts for some other guests too!
The main things you need to ensure is that you’re in love with your venue, your immediate wedding party can be catered for and there’s either enough accommodation in the locality or transport has been arranged to help your guests get to and from the wedding.