Wedding planner has trouble finding wedding venue for upcoming wedding
A wedding planner with experience in planning weddings in Australia says she can’t find a wedding venue in Sydney that will allow her to complete the wedding plans for an Australian bride.
While Australia’s wedding planning system is widely viewed as the best in the world, a recent report from a leading Australian think tank found that only a small number of venues offer online wedding planning services, with the rest lacking online registration.
The report found that out of the 27 venues that responded to the survey, only seven of them had registered online to offer wedding planning.
The venues included weddings in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide, as well as a number of wedding planning events and parties.
“It’s a bit of a big deal,” says Julie Hogg, who was head of planning at the Sydney wedding venue Waverley on Friday and Saturday.
A spokesperson for the NSW Government said the state government has a long-standing commitment to digital marriage, with online registration for all couples and domestic partnerships.
But Hogg says the government still has no plans to expand its online wedding registration.
She says the online system for Australian couples and international couples is not yet up to scratch, and it is “not a seamless experience”.
“You can’t be online and register at the same time,” she said.
Australia’s wedding registration system has many issues, including a lack of online registration, a lack, for instance, of a process to approve new wedding venue plans, and a lack for the Government to set a threshold for when a venue can’t hold a wedding.
At the same day the ABC contacted the Sydney Wedding Centre for comment.
The company was unable to provide an official response.
A spokeswoman for the Victorian Government, however, said the Government has committed to online registration in the state for all people who wish to register their relationship.
Victoria has not yet taken any formal action on online marriage registration, she said, but said the Victorian State Register of Electors and Registrars has already been set up for the purpose.
This is the same process the NSW State Government has implemented, and that has been a significant step forward in the area,” she added.
Videos of the wedding at Sydney’s Grandstand Hotel and reception in April 2014 are posted online by The Wedding Coordinator.
One of the bride’s relatives told the ABC that she had been told she could register at her local venue, but that she was not registered online and would need to make an appointment with the venue’s manager.
Despite the wedding venue’s lack of registration, Hogg said the venue was a good place to register for a future wedding.”
The venue is a good venue to start the process,” she says.
She said there was no “problem” with the registration system at the wedding.
She added: “You’re not required to be registered.
It’s a very good system and it works very well.
“Read more about weddings in the ABC’s Wedding Planner article