Where to Start Your Venue Search

France has more than ten thousand wedding venues. If you've just started looking, that number alone probably explains why you feel stuck before you've even begun.

I'm Laura Southgate. I've run French Wedding Company for fourteen years and personally visited over three hundred French wedding venues — dry hire barns, vineyard estates, working châteaux, day-only gardens, all of it. I started this business by accident, relocating six weddings with three months' notice after the château I worked for changed hands. Since then I've watched hundreds of couples go through exactly the search you're about to start. The ones who get it right aren't the ones who look at the most venues. They're the ones who know what they're looking for before they start looking.

Why the search feels harder than it should

A few years ago, most of the couples who came to me were struggling to find a venue at all — there just weren't enough English-friendly options listed anywhere. That's flipped. Now the problem is too many options, presented inconsistently, in a language you may not read fluently, with photography that doesn't always tell you the truth about the space.

Without a framework, that volume becomes noise. You end up with forty browser tabs open and no clearer idea of what you actually want than when you started.

"We were so overwhelmed just starting to look at properties we quickly gave up as we just didn't know where to begin." — Craig & Luke

Start with a framework, not a shortlist

Before you look at a single venue, settle four things: your date and season (August closes more French venues than you'd expect — more on that another time), how many nights you actually need on site, which one or two regions you're searching in — not "France," a region — and a realistic guest count with accommodation needs attached. Skipping this step is the single biggest reason searches drag on for months.

Understand the three venue types before you start browsing

Most French wedding venues fall clearly into one of three categories, although some cross between two — and it's worth knowing the difference before you browse.

Dry hire gives you the space and nothing else — maximum flexibility, but you're sourcing and coordinating every supplier yourself.

Hotels come with infrastructure already in place — catering, staff, rooms — which simplifies logistics considerably.

Day-only venues have no accommodation on site, so you're arranging guest stays elsewhere.

None of these is "better." They suit different couples, budgets, and appetites for coordination. And plenty of venues blur the lines — a dry hire property that includes catering, or requires you to use a nominated caterer; a day-only venue that keeps one room aside for the bride and groom, or lets you stay on for a night or two. It's worth checking exactly what's included rather than assuming from the category alone.

Build a long list before you fall in love with anything

Once your framework is set, the goal isn't to find "the one" straight away — it's to build a long list of fifteen to twenty venues that genuinely match what you've defined. Genuinely match, not just look beautiful in a Pinterest grid. A gorgeous château that's the wrong region, the wrong guest capacity, or the wrong venue type for your budget isn't a shortlist candidate, however good the photos are.

The question most couples forget to ask early

Before you contact a single venue: what's the Plan B? Outdoor ceremonies in France carry real weather obligations, and a venue's Plan B space tells you more about how seriously they take your day than almost anything else on their website. I've seen "Plan B" turn out to be a marquee in a car park. Ask early — it saves a wasted visit later.

None of this replaces doing the work yourself. It just means doing it in the right order, so the search stops feeling like forty open tabs and starts feeling like a process you're actually in control of. That's the whole idea behind my Guided Planning: Venue Search — the exact framework above, expanded into five guided stages, with me alongside you throughout.