Your wedding is one of the biggest days of your life. You and your spouse will be legally combining your lives in front of all of your friends and family. To get the celebration and your married life off to the right start, you want to have your wedding in the right place. Here are five tips for choosing the right ballroom as your wedding venue.

1. Pick a Venue That Fits Your Style

Are you going for a modern wedding or something a little more traditional? Is it going to be rustic chic or contemporary? What will you be serving? What will you be doing?

You need to take all of these things into consideration to ensure that you pick a wedding ballroom that fits the image you have in your head. While you can often cover the walls if needed, a ballroom that already matches your style will greatly decrease your decoration expenses. If you’re serving food buffet style, you’re going to need room for the food tables in addition to tables for guests to sit at. However, if you plan on serving a meal, you need space for the caterers and servers to prepare the food. If you want to have dancing, you need plenty of room for a dance floor.

2. Consider Everything the Ballroom Can Offer

A wedding requires a lot of planning. However, some ballrooms try to offer everything in one place. Talk to the venue about if they offer catering, transportation, entertainment, or cakes or if they contract with services that provide any of these. You should also consider any extra amenities that may make the evening more luxurious for your guests, such as valet or a coat check.

3. Give Your Fiancé an Opinion

Many brides take it upon themselves to do most of the wedding planning, but the planning process should be fun for the couple to do together. Include your fiancé in all aspects of the planning process and actually take their opinions into account. This will help increase the bond between the two of you and ensure that the day is perfect for you both as a couple.

4. Stay Within Your Budget

Weddings can get expensive quite quickly. You have to clarify your budget and stick to it. You can go online to find a website that will help you create your budget and account for all of the expenses. If you know a venue is out of your price range, don’t even look at it. Otherwise, you might find yourself falling in love with it at the moment and breaking your budget.

5. Trust Your Instincts

You will just know in your gut when you find the place where you want to get married. A feeling will fill your heart when you walk into it. Trust your instinct and go with the wedding ballroom that hits your heartstring.

Once you pick the ballroom for your wedding, you’ll be able to send out the invitations and really get to planning the details. This is when the fun part comes in, so enjoy it. All the work is worth it when you say your vows.