Finding and choosing your wedding venue can seem a little daunting and we can understand why; it’s an important decision and probably one of the first decisions that you make in your wedding planning journey. We always suggest the best place to start is with guests, work out a rough idea of who your wedding guests are going to be and therefore how many guests you’re looking at having. This will automatically rule out some venues and rule in others. Then you need to think about dates, as when you talk to venues, you’ll want to check their availability. If you’re flexible that’s great as this gives you more of an opportunity to get the place you want, but if you have a specific date in mind be sure to tell venues straight away as you don’t want to get your hopes up if they’re fully booked already.

Historical wedding venues are a popular choice with engaged couples and in our opinion, rightly so, not that we’re biased or anything!! Here is a few of the reasons why we LOVE historical wedding venues (Dode is obviously our favourite, but don’t tell anyone…)

Historic locations tend to come with beautiful grounds, which is great for so many reasons. They give you the perfect backdrop for your wedding photographs, they are an extension of the location itself, so mean plenty of space for your big day and if the weather is nice you’ll probably find a great deal of time is spent there by you and your guests.

At Dode many of our brides and grooms have entertainment in the grounds, from vintage carnival games, birds of prey to musicians! A lot of our recommended caterers also come with mobile vehicles, which can be parked on the grounds and mean you don’t have to cram everything into the church and you get to just enjoy its beauty.

The winding lane that leads up to our medieval church is overhung with beautiful trees and as you enter the Church you’ll see it lit by candles. It’s the ‘ideal’ first impression you want to give your guests, because let’s face it everyone wants their guests to arrive and say ‘WOW’ and at Dode, they really have no choice, which is another perk of getting hitched in a historical venue, they don’t tend to disappoint in the first impression stakes.

Historical venues don’t need dressing up, whatever venue you choose, many of the decorations will already be there. The furniture, art on the walls, rugs, lighting, unusual windows or doors…all of this will give your venue a specific look and feel. And everything from place settings or flowers to accessories and your cake can all be subtly themed to match the look of the venue.

This is also why it’s great to get recommendations of suppliers from your venue as likelihood those suppliers will have worked at weddings at that venue before and will be able to show you lots of examples of things that have been used previously and suit your venue perfectly. Whilst you will probably have a vision in your head it’s good to have some inspiration to give you a helping hand.

Now this one might be a bit of an obvious one, but historical venues come with a lot of history (go figure) and this just adds to the atmosphere on your big day and you getting married there is just another addition to its incredible history, what a way to start your new fairy tale…

Thinking about wedding venues, looking for somewhere to say I do, then why not come and have a look around our magical Dode. We are generally open the first Sunday of every month for you to come and visit, but you can also arrange a private tour, simply contact our Ceremony Coordinator Becky to make arrangements: becky@dodevillage.com