Unless the first wedding venue you look at is the perfect
place for you, you will probably have to deal with the issue of declining some of the venues on your shortlist once you have made your final choice. Do you need to let them know you have chosen somewhere else and if so how do you go about telling them? Here are the answers to some of your questions on declining wedding venues:
Question: Do I need to let venues know that we won’t be using them?
Answer: While it’s not obligatory to tell the wedding venues that you’ve excluded that you aren’t going to use them for your wedding, it’s only polite to do so if they have invested time and effort with you.
If a venue has merely sent you a brochure, you don’t have to contact them. If the venue’s wedding co-ordinator has given you a full guided tour and spent an hour chatting to you over coffee and cakes, however, you should extend them the courtesy of telling them your decision. Letting a venue know you have decided against using them gives them the chance to ask for your feedback and your reasons for going elsewhere.
Question: How do I decline a wedding venue?
Answer: The easiest and most tactful way to let a venue know you won’t be using them is to send a card or e-mail thanking them for meeting with you, or for giving you a tour of the site. Just say that regretfully you have decided not to hire their venue, or that you have made the difficult decision to use another venue.
If you are happy to give reasons for your choice, either state them at this time or give a phone number so that the venue can call you for feedback if they want to. Some wedding venues have pre-prepared feedback questionnaires and will send you one in the post once they know you aren’t planning on using them for your wedding.
If you visit a wedding venue and it immediately becomes clear that you won’t be using it because it doesn’t fit one of your essential criteria, let the person that is escorting you know as soon as possible so you aren’t wasting too much of their time.
Question: Should I be honest about why I didn’t choose them?
Answer: If you are offering feedback to one of the venues you have visited, make it honest, useful and constructive so that they can use it to improve their service in the future, or to get an idea of what is happening in the wedding market in their area.
Don’t be embarrassed to tell the truth if cost was the main reason for your choice, and if your final choice was based on something as frivolous as the taste of the chocolate torte at another venue you can tell them that too.
Question: Should I tell them where we are having the wedding?
Answer: Again, you don’t have to give this information if you don’t want to, but it can be very useful for a venue to know who its main competitors are, and what they are doing to make them more attractive to engaged couples. Of course a venue might be unhappy if you have gone to their bitter rival, but they are unlikely to get upset with you about it.