Tuesday, July 24, 2007

#122: jersey girl.

is that the sucky j.lo movie? i don't remember. i'm guessing i'm in the majority when i say i haven't seen it.

tif from NJ asked on my previous post what search terms i use for my venue finds.

well...i'm going to say first...that you must google like crazy. don't ever give up on google. keep googling. google like you've never googled before. google like you'll get your wallet stolen if you don't. because really...without doing the research, that's a real possibility!

p.s. what the hell did we do before google?!?!?! *shrugs*

now that i've said my google peace, what i've done is use key words in various combos and include the city.

"rent mansion wedding los angeles"
"reception los angeles"
"wedding venue los angeles"
"outdoor wedding los angeles"

the world is your google oyster...because any combo of wedding words will throw lists of venues at your feet.

from the results of my googling, i click on a site that seems relevant and i find the page where they feature a list of venues. then i scan the venues and if any shout out at me, i go directly to the venue website and try to find how much $$$ it's going to cost. and by $$$, i mean $.

another tip: i've found that if i link to a venue that uses an offsite caterer, and then google the caterer to get to the caterer's website, the caterer oftentimes also has a list of venues they work closely with. and bingo, another list to scan.

basically, it's kind of like how you ended up at my blogpage. you click on a link that takes you to another link and so on and so forth. keep clicking and keep looking. it takes some time...but the thought of having a gem of a location to have the wedding of your dreams (on a budget nonetheless!)...should keep you motivated. a quick google search took me to what should be a good starting point for NJ wedding venues. happy hunting tif!

6 comments:

bride of rochester said...

Google google google. when I was site hunting I pretty much wore out the g, o, l and e on my laptop.

I put an email together naming everything I wanted to know about a reception location (cost, extras, if they had a day of coordinator included etc) and sent out a blankets to places we were interested in. I got tons of great responses.

Once we narrowed it down we didn't make appointments... instead we snuck up on the venues on Saturdays. We actually got to see several weddings going on (which in some instances totally killed some receptions spots), and saw how well they were run without having anything glossed over. When we found the one spot we wanted, I made an appointment, asked a bunch more questions and gave her the deposit right then.

Anonymous said...

ooh google :)

did you see mrs. lemon's new post re: her centerpieces? fabulous.

let me just say that i love your website b/c it's exactly what i want to do, too :)

talda said...

google has been my best friend. that and scamming other wedding related vendor sites. their recommended links has led to a lot of new places.

one unexpected help was from a venue itself. i asked about capacity and found that the layout wouldn't work for what i wanted and the coordinator was helpful enough to suggest other places that would work better for my [fake] budget. total score.

Jenn Huck said...

You can also check Visitor's and Tourism boards for you city. Madison, WI, has a whole list of venues on their visitor's bureau website.

eisor said...

I love Google too! Such a valuable resource for wedding planning!

Also, I wanted to add that I actually liked Jersey Girl. Jennifer Lopez is in it for all of 5 minutes. It's actually a pretty cute movie. Don't rule it out because she's in it!

Anonymous said...

Also try www(dot)eventective(dot)com and elegala(dot)com. I'm going through the same search upon search upon link... anyone know of a place in Boston? or Rhode Island? or Connecticut? or Maine? I'm trying to be open to neighboring states in the hope of keeping costs low. Anyway, give those sites a whirl!!