Choosing Wedding Locations 

Thoughts from a  wedding planner. We hope that this article will help you see how well you are doing if you succeed in having a really happy wedding! Give yourself a great deal of applaud and don't get too concerned if things don't run perfectly ALL of the time!

You would think that being a wedding planner would be a great opportunity to see people at their best. After all, what is more beautiful than young love? Nevertheless, the truth is far from pleasant. As a wedding planner, I see some of the worst aspects of human nature. You see, everyone has a vision of their wedding, and no one wants to let reality get in the way. Some people have been dreaming of the ideal wedding location since they were five years old. Others are even worse, having a specific vision of what the toasts will be about, and what everyone will say about them. Basically, weddings are an opportunity for unbridled vanity and childishness. So much for true love!

Strangely enough, the most difficult part of planning a wedding is picking the location. Once you have picked wedding locations, you are halfway there. You wouldn't think it would be that hard. You would think that people would consider factors of climate, for example, to decide on wedding reception locations. In this business, you always need to have a backup plan, after all. If, for example, you want to have an outdoor wedding in Portland during the rainy season, you had better make sure that it is nowhere near the coast, and you had better make sure that you have a backup hall rented just in case.

Yet clients don't want to hear that. They want to hear that the wedding planner can make everything perfect.

If I didn't know better, I would think that some of my past clients have blamed me for the weather going wrong! Some of them choose the most outlandish wedding locations you could think of. They decide to get married, for example, at the end of a steep climb up in the foothills, and then complain when their eighty year old aunt can't find a handicapped accessible path.

This, after all, is the perfect day. It is my responsibility to see that it turns out perfectly, and any flaw in perfection is my fault – or so they would have me believe. Somehow, I am supposed to make up for their poor choices of wedding locations.

Yes, that's me in the picture, at an exotic wedding location cocktail in hand. (There is no let up to the stress for the wedding planner!)

I always tell the couple to save the exotic locations for their wedding honeymoon. Wedding locations should be in someplace pleasant, practical, and above all easily accessible. A lot of people don't realize how hard it is to pull off a wedding without something going wrong.

It isn't worth betting the success of your wedding party that everyone will be able to climb up to whatever scenic cliff-edge you were at when you first fell in love!