Getting started as a wedding venue

As a venue, you’re often the central organiser of a wedding day. Multiple vendors come onto your premises, you may handle billing on behalf of the couple, and your team needs to know exactly what’s happening and when. Getting set up properly means your couples have a professional coordination hub from the moment they book with you.

Step 1 — Complete your venue profile

Go to Settings → Profile and fill in:

Business name — your venue name as couples know it
Category — select Venue
Location — your full address (this is used for weather forecasts and shared with vendors in the workspace)
Timezone — your local timezone
Bio and description — what makes your venue distinctive; this appears on your public directory listing
Website and Instagram — linked from your profile

Why: Every vendor invited into your wedding workspaces will see your venue profile. A complete venue profile — name, address, photos — is the context other vendors use when planning their arrival, logistics, and setup. Your photographer needs to know where to be; your florist needs to know the setup window. A clear profile reduces vendor questions before the day.

Step 2 — Build your enquiry form

Go to Settings → Enquiry form and customise the questions couples answer when they contact you about a booking.

For a venue, useful questions include:

Wedding date (or date range they’re considering)
Estimated guest count (ceremony and reception separately if they differ)
Ceremony and reception in the same space, or split across areas?
Catering preference: in-house, external, or flexible?
Accommodation requirements (if your venue has rooms)
How they heard about you

Why: Your enquiry form is the first stage of your booking pipeline. The answers tell you immediately whether the couple fits your capacity, whether their date is available, and what package conversations to have. A well-designed form is worth more than a long back-and-forth email chain.

Step 3 — Configure your availability — this one is critical

Go to Settings → Availability and:

Block dates you’re already booked — add every confirmed wedding date. Unlike other vendor types, venues usually have a hard one-booking-per-day limit (or per space), so this needs to be accurate.
Set days of the week you hold weddings — typically Friday through Sunday; mark other days as unavailable
Set your availability sharing to Public — so couples can check your calendar before enquiring

If you have multiple ceremony or reception spaces that can run simultaneously, make a note in your enquiry form — Wedding Computer doesn’t currently model multiple-space availability natively, so you’ll need to manage that manually.

Why: A venue that has an accurate availability calendar stops receiving enquiries for dates it’s already booked. More importantly, your booked couples’ workspaces will show the wedding event in their shared calendar feed — and their vendors will see it. The accuracy of that calendar matters.

Step 4 — Set up invoicing and payment schedules

Go to Settings → Payments → Connect Stripe and connect your Stripe account. If you prefer bank transfer or direct invoice, set your payment method to Bank transfer — invoices will include your banking details.

Build a payment schedule template for your standard hire:

Deposit (typically 20–30%) at booking
Mid-payment (if applicable) several months before the wedding
Final balance 4–6 weeks prior

Why: Couples are managing multiple payment schedules across all their vendors. Sending invoices through Wedding Computer puts your payments alongside all the others in one view — the couple can see everything they owe, pay online, and both parties have a clear record.

Step 5 — Create a hire contract template

Go to Settings → Contracts and create a standard venue hire agreement. Include:

Venue hire scope (spaces, hours, included equipment)
Catering arrangements and restrictions
Noise limits and end times
Cancellation and postponement policy
Security deposit and bond conditions
Setup and bump-out times
What happens if the wedding date changes

Why: Sending a contract via Wedding Computer means the couple signs it digitally, you get an immediate confirmation, and the signed document lives in the workspace. No printing, no PDFs by email, no chasing signatures.

Step 6 — Create your first wedding workspace

When a couple books, open their contact record and click Promote to wedding. Fill in the wedding details:

The date
Your venue address as the ceremony and reception location
Ceremony start time, reception start time
Getting-ready start time (if they’re using your facilities)
Guest count

Then:

Set yourself as managing vendor — go to People → your name → enable Can manage. This means ceremony time, reception time, and other shared timing fields can only be changed with your approval. As the venue, you know what times work operationally — no vendor should be able to reschedule the ceremony without your knowledge.
Invite the couple — Add people → Invite couple.
Build the venue-side run sheet — add timeline items for bump-in, room setup, vendor arrival windows, cocktail hour, dinner, speeches, dancing, and bump-out. Set these to vendors visibility so every vendor in the workspace sees the venue’s schedule constraints.
Invite the vendor team as they’re confirmed — add each vendor to the workspace when they’re booked. They join as members and can add their own items to the timeline.

Why: The managing vendor flag is the most important setting for venues. When you have caterers, florists, and entertainment all wanting to know their setup windows, change request approvals let you maintain operational control without managing it all over email. Change requests come to you, you approve, and the timeline updates.

Step 7 — Understand the financial party role (if applicable)

If your venue handles coordinating payments to other vendors on the couple’s behalf — routing the couple’s money to a caterer, entertainment, or florist — go to Settings → Profile and enable Is organiser (sometimes visible as the financial party setting).

When enabled, your venue account is marked as the financial party for weddings where you’re the organiser. This is relevant for how invoicing flows are displayed and for accounting purposes.

Why: Not all venues operate this way. If you simply sell venue hire and the couple manages everything else independently, you don’t need this. If you’re a full-service venue that the couple pays once and you pay all vendors, this flag is how the system represents that arrangement.

Step 8 — Add team members (Pro, if you have event staff)

If your operations team needs access — event coordinators, floor managers, booking administrators — go to Settings → Team and invite them. Each team member gets their own login under your venue account.

Why: An event coordinator on your staff should be able to check the run sheet for any upcoming wedding without needing your login. Team members access your account’s weddings directly, and you can see their activity in the audit log.

Go to Settings → Calendar and copy your iCal feed URL. Subscribe to it in your staff calendar tool (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook). Share the link with anyone on your team who needs to see upcoming event dates.

For two-way sync (Pro), set up CalDAV under Settings → Device sync. This is particularly useful if your operations team uses Apple Calendar or another CalDAV-compatible app.

Why: Your iCal feed shows every upcoming wedding as a calendar event. As you book weddings, they appear automatically. Your team always knows what events are on without checking the dashboard.

You’re ready when:

Your venue profile is complete (name, address, description)
Your enquiry form is asking the right questions
All booked dates are blocked in availability
Stripe is connected and payment schedule structure is decided
You have a contract template ready
You know how to create a workspace and set yourself as managing vendor
Key staff are added as team members

What to do right now

Take your nearest upcoming booked wedding and create a workspace for it. Set yourself as the managing vendor, invite the couple, and add your venue schedule (bump-in, setup windows, end times) to the timeline. Then invite the confirmed vendors.

When they start adding their own items — the florist’s setup time, the DJ’s soundcheck — you’ll see exactly how the coordination flow works. The planners & venues guide covers managing vendor approvals in depth.