Couples choose a setting from photographs and then live with its consequences for eight hours. Here is what each one asks for.
Beach
Gives you: the picture everybody has in their head. Water behind the vows, bare feet, sunset into the ceremony.
Asks for: flooring, wind planning and a shoe warning.
Sand and chair legs are enemies. Any beach venue worth booking lays boards under the dining area, and if it does not, ask why. Sand and heels are a worse combination still. Put it in the guest information and mean it.
Wind matters more than rain on a beach. A west-facing deck at Çeşme is breezy from two until six and settles by seven, which is a scheduling fact rather than a problem.
Quiet cost: the wet-weather plan is frequently a marquee rather than a room, and marquees are a line item.
Best examples: Lara Beach Terrace for the literal version, Bodrum Bay Club for the produced one.
Villa
Gives you: a week rather than a day, and a guest list that already knows each other by the time the ceremony starts.
Asks for: everything to be brought in, and stairs.
There is no hotel kitchen, so catering arrives and cooks on site, usually an advantage, because the menu is built for you rather than pulled from a banqueting file. There is no reception desk either, which means the planner is doing a job that a hotel would otherwise absorb.
Hillside villas in Kalkan are built on steps, and some of them have four levels. Beautiful, and genuinely difficult for some guests.
Quiet cost: the villa sleeps twelve and the wedding is for thirty-five. The other twenty-three need accommodation nearby, which is a block, a shuttle and a conversation.
Best examples: Villa Lykia, Kalkan Hillside House.
Garden
Gives you: enclosed planting, mature trees and a set of walls that keep the wind off.
Asks for: a plan for insects, and boards wherever people will stand.
A walled garden is the most forgiving of the outdoor settings, because the boundary does the work that a marquee would otherwise do. Side Ancient Garden is the clearest example, with Roman stonework, olive trees and no decoration required. There is almost never accommodation on site.
Farm
Gives you: long tables, string lights, no neighbours and frequently no curfew at all.
Asks for: tolerance of uneven ground.
Compacted earth under olive trees is charming and it is not a lawn. Boards go down for dining and dancing; the rest is a grove. An evening under trees in June has mosquitoes in it, which is solved with citronella and a note to guests, and is not solved by ignoring it.
Quiet cost: everybody arrives and leaves by shuttle, and the shuttle runs later than you think.
Best example: Fethiye Olive Farm.
Historic
Gives you: gravity. A building with four hundred years behind it does not need decorating and cannot be replicated.
Asks for: obedience.
Historic venues have rules that are not negotiable: where you may fix anything, what may be lit, how late music runs, and how many people the floor is permitted to carry. A Bosphorus yalı stops music at half past midnight because it has protected neighbours on both sides, and nobody is going to change that for a wedding.
Quiet cost: styling budget goes down, restriction goes up. That is usually a good trade and it is a trade.
Best examples: Bosphorus Yalı, Old City Terrace.
Hotel
Gives you: everything in one place, and a fallback of equal quality.
Asks for: sharing.
A four-hundred-room resort has other guests, which is why the outdoor music stops at one. It is also why the room block works, the transfers are simple and nobody is lost.
Quiet cost: distinctiveness. A hotel ballroom is a blank sheet and everything that gives it character arrives on a truck.
Best examples: Belek Garden Resort, Ölüdeniz Lagoon Hotel.
Boat
Gives you: a horizon instead of a backdrop, and complete privacy.
Asks for: flexibility. The route is decided on the morning by the captain based on wind, and guests who need a fixed itinerary find that stressful.
Quiet cost: twenty-four people is the real limit for a seated lunch, whatever the licence says.
Best example: Aegean Charter Yacht.
The question that decides it
Not "which is prettiest" but "what do I want the day after to look like?"
A villa week has a day after built into it. A hotel weekend has brunch. A beach club has a hangover and a flight. All three are legitimate; they are just different weddings.
Judging a venue you have not stood in
How to judge a venue you have not stood in and the full venue list.
