This is the year of celebrations. You and your husband are celebrating your 30 year wedding anniversary; your older daughter is celebrating her college graduation; and your younger daughter is celebrating her high school graduation. Next summer, the four of you are all taking a trip to Greece, but you also want a chance to allow the girls to celebrate their milestones with their friends and family. As a result, you have been busy meeting with different representatives of banquet spaces. Your older daughter wants to celebrate her accomplishment with the five other gymnastics teammates that she has been competing with the last four years; your younger daughter wants to celebrate with her best friend. Add in the fact that all of these friends and teammates have parents who want to have a say in the celebration and the planning process has gotten a bit complicated. When you factor in that the two parties will take place 12 hours apart. the high school party will be in the city where you live, but your daughter has been going to school down south and wants to celebrate her graduation near campus.

In many ways, planning for the family’s trip to Greece has been easier to navigate than dealing with deposits and menus in banquet spaces that are a half a day’s drive away from each other.

Private Party Venues and Corporate Banquet Spaces Often Have to be Reserved Months in Advance

From planning a wedding to celebrating a graduation or an anniversary, there are many details that need to be managed. Some venues require significant deposits and very specific menus. Others allow you to cater in your own food and only require a small deposit. In almost all cases, however, it is important that you get your space reserved sooner rather than later. Wedding reception halls are so booked, in fact, that many couples find themselves securing a wedding reception spot before they are able to select a date and a church. For others, the reservation process itself can seem like a delicate dance between wedding and reception venues and complicated family calendars. For all of these reasons, there are times when couples plan their events as much as a year in advance, sending a save the date card at some point before the official invitations are mailed.

Fortunately, as the need for more and more party venues has continued to grow there are many companies that are offering their services. From barns that are being transformed into beautiful celebration paces to new construction of buildings that serve only as reception spaces, bride and grooms, as well as many others who want to celebrate, have a wider range of choices. Whether you want to say your vows at a local vineyard looking over a valley or you want to celebrate a high school graduation with catering from a local farm to table ice cream menu, it will continue to be important to get as many of the details in place as possible as early as possible.

Consider some of these facts and figures about both small banquet spaces and large event venues:

• As couples move away from the more traditional church wedding, nearly 43% of weddings are now officiated by a friend or family member rather than a professional or a clergy member.
• Hotels banquet halls, and country clubs are three of the most popular wedding venues. There are, however, as many as 40% of couples who are now looking for unusual venues that better reflect their personality, according to a survey from The Knot.
• With a reported 11 hours each week spent planning., 50% of women indicate that they find planning their wedding more stressful than they imagined.
• 78% of corporations include vegetarian options at their corporate events, according to a Dinova. Accoding to the same survey, another 64% include gluten-free fare.
• 63% of brides say that they feel a lot of pressure to have the perfect wedding, according to WeddingWire’s 2017 Newlywed Report.
• Representing $280 billion in spending, 18 million events and meetings are organized in the U.S. every year.

Graduations. Anniversaries. Weddings. If you are planning for a milestone event for yourself or another family member, now is the time to get started!