When Libby Bryant and her now-husband Paul – both architects – were planning their Colorado wedding, they had trouble finding a venue online. It’s not as though there aren’t sites for finding venues: there are. But, according to Libby, most of them focus on spaces designed to host events – ball rooms, conference rooms and offerings from national chains.
“We didn’t want a typical wedding venue,” said Bryant. “Spaces are so important to us. They can reflect people’s personalities in a way that other things may not be able to.”
So Bryant called around, and discovered there are plenty of non-traditional venues in Colorado – ranches, performance halls, museums – that don’t actively advertise the fact that you can rent them.
“If you don’t have the time, the resources, and a lot of help to find what you’re looking for – and you aren’t looking for just a generic room downtown – it’s really difficult,” said Bryant, who planned her wedding shortly after moving to Denver.
“I was calling buildings and asking them if they rent out their space, and I came to find out so many of them do. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t an easier way to find this out in one place, so that’s how Venue Please was born.”
The site, which Bryant and her husband co-founded, only offers unique spaces. Scroll through it’s Pinterest-esque main page and and you’ll find pictures of non-traditional venues from all over the state – the Walker Fine Art Gallery in Denver, FACTORYmade in Boulder and the Holden/Marolt Mining and Ranching Museum in Aspen. You can even rent the Main Concourse at Coors Field (non-game days only, obviously).
“What we classify ‘unique’ is if the venue’s primary function is something other than just an event space,” explains Bryant.
It’s not clear how a would-be event planner would find out these spaces are available for rent without the site – and that’s part of the point.
“One of the goals of the site is to visually communicate the space, what’s unique about the space…and let people decide on their own if their event will work well,” said Bryant.
So the site is mainly visual. It’s also anything but busy – the home page is made up almost entirely of pictures of venues, and if you keep scrolling down you’ll keep seeing more.
“I have a major problem with a lot of sites and how cluttered they are,” said Bryant. “It really is supposed to be a very easy, visual, straight-forward site. You don’t get distracted or bombarded.”
Even the amount of information about each venue is limited: photos, a brief writeup, occupancy limits, a map and little else. That’s also intentional.
“We really try to limit it,” said Bryant. “If you’re choosing a venue for an important occasion the pictures really matter, the occupancy and the cost really matter, and above and beyond that you’ll generally then want to see the venue in person and enquire about the specifics.”
If visual exploration isn’t enough there is also a search function, allowing users to find venues with specific feature.
Bryant started the site by seeking out venues, but now organizations across the state are contacting her to be listed.
“The day that that started happening I was like ‘Yes, this will be okay,'” said Bryant.
While most of the 85 venues currently listed are in Colorado some aren’t – there’s a venue in Washington DC and four in New York City.
“We haven’t been focusing outside Colorado, but we’re not restricting it,” said Bryant.
The eventual goal is for the site to be a nationwide source for non-traditional venues, but for now the site is mostly about Colorado. Those interested should head to VenuePlease.com.