The very first thing Shane and I wanted to decide on was our wedding venue. In our opinion, that was the most important factor. There’s not much you can plan until you have a date set and you know exactly what kind of space and guest count you can estimate for.

The big downside, though, was that most wedding venues in the central Florida area fall into one of three main categories: ballroom, barn, or beach.

Beach was right out. That was too much of a drive in our opinion, and besides, to quote Anakin Skywalker- “I hate sand. It’s far too coarse. Gets everywhere.” We’re not really beachy people (Shane can barely handle Castaway Cay on our cruises) and it isn’t our vibe.

We briefly considered ballroom. That just didn’t seem like us either. We wanted a formal-ish wedding, but we’re definitely not black tie affair people. And we didn’t want a “wedding factory” vibe either.

(We also looked into a Disney wedding. While it is possible for it to be on the affordable side, the easiest way to cut costs would be to A) have a hotel ballroom reception and B) have 20 people or less. Neither of those things appealed to us, and we didn’t want to spend crazy amounts of money, so Disney was taken off the list. Although…if I could have gone with that, I definitely would have done a ceremony in the UK pavilion garden, a reception at the American Adventure rotunda, and a dessert party at Fantasmic.)

That left us with a barn. Which, honestly, neither of us minded, but we really wanted to find something that was a little more garden-y rather than rustic. Unfortunately, most options veered in the cowboy boots and antlers direction than the flowers and picket fence variety.

So what did I do? I made a Google spreadsheet of every venue that seemed even remotely possible. I sorted everything by cost, amenities (like a bridal suite, parking options, etc.), availability, and ended up with eighty possible venues.

I showed the spreadsheet to my parents, who had agreed to pay for our venue, and my mom said “that one. We should tour that one.”

I was a bit shocked, because the venue she picked was definitely an outlier. In desperation I had searched for “library wedding central florida” and this particular venue had popped up. I had sort of assumed it would be too expensive- my top choices were a couple of wedding barns that allowed for a lot of DIY. But lo and behold, that was the first venue we toured.

Stay tuned to see how the tour went, and if we picked it! How did you select your wedding venue? Did you spreadsheet your options or did you just go with the first one that seemed like the right choice?