A wedding is booked eighteen months out and the year in between is appointments: the first show-round, the second one with her mother, the tasting, the final walk-round a fortnight before. Couples book each of those themselves, from a page that only offers hours somebody is genuinely free, and the date itself is held against a deposit.
Blu ManorBook online
Saturday hire14 June · 110$4500.00
Tasting2h · 6 seats$45.00
Show-round45m · EllieBook
Next free11:00 AM12:30 PM6:00 PM
Booked online
9:15 PM
On a Sunday, four tabs open
Deposit
$1125.00
25% took 14 June off the board
Space and person
Both free
Or the viewing is not offered
Not one of these is about the day. All four are about the eighteen months in which a couple decides whether it is going to be you.
Couples look at venues in the evening, together, on a sofa. Put your viewing hours on a page and they take one there and then, instead of sending a message that gets answered while they are booking somewhere else.
Take a deposit at the point of booking and the date comes off the board. A date pencilled in an inbox in March is a date you find out you never had in August.
On the paid plans, ask how many people and roughly when on the booking form. An hour spent walking a couple round a room that seats two hundred when there are forty of them is an hour neither of you gets back.
A tasting seats however many the kitchen can plate and an open day takes however many you can walk round. Each is capped, and once it is full the page says so rather than letting eleven couples book six chairs.
On a Saturday your lawn is a wedding, not a viewing, and the person who does show-rounds is running it. Both halves are held together, so a viewing hour only exists when the space is genuinely empty and somebody is genuinely there to open the door. Each of you keeps your own hours and your own days off, and the couple booking at eleven at night sees the truth rather than a form that promises somebody will be in touch.
The tasting is not a new customer. It is the couple who came in March, brought her mother in May and paid the deposit in June, and every one of those sits on one record with what they told you each time: the guest count, the date, the thing they asked about the marquee. Whoever picks up the phone in month eleven can read the whole story rather than asking a couple to explain their own wedding to you again, which is the moment a venue stops feeling like the right one.
Quarter past nine on a Sunday. A couple are on a sofa with a laptop and four venues open in four tabs, and this is the hour in the whole week when they are actually deciding. Two of the four have a page they can book a viewing on. Two have a form that says somebody will be in touch.
The reply goes out on Tuesday morning and offers three times. By Tuesday the couple have already been round one of the other two, and a venue seen first with a glass of something is very hard to come second to.
Picktime puts your viewing hours on a page couples book from at nine on a Sunday night, asks the guest count and the season before you spend the hour, and holds the date against a deposit once they say yes.
Say when you show people round and which of you does it. A viewing then only appears when the space is empty and the person is there, which is what makes a booking made at eleven at night one you can keep.
Give the tasting its seats and the open day its places. Add each space you let with its capacity and its hours, so the barn, the lawn and the room upstairs are three things rather than one.
Take a deposit at the point of booking, per space, and say how late a booking may be cancelled. Put the link on your site, your Instagram, your Google listing and every wedding directory you are already listed in.
The days a wedding venue is least able to answer the phone are Saturdays, and Saturdays are when couples are visiting venues. Picktime’s AI receptionist answers on a number of its own, around the clock, and takes several calls at once rather than sending the second one to voicemail. It works out what the caller wants, captures their name and their number, guides them towards a show-round and can end on one that lands in your calendar. If it is a price or a date only you can give, it transfers the call. Every call is transcribed, so the guest count and the month somebody said on a Saturday afternoon are written down rather than half-remembered on Monday.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no date at which it stops, no card to add, and nothing that quietly turns off in a fortnight.
A show-round or a tasting lands in the calendar you already have open, and the paid plans sync it both ways, so when it moves there it moves here. Deposits run through PayPal, or through Stripe or Square on the paid ones. The booking page goes on Facebook, Instagram and your Google listing as well as your own site, which is where a couple with four tabs open is looking.
Picktime runs in a browser on a phone as well as a laptop, so tomorrow’s viewings are readable from the middle of a set-up, and there are iOS and Android apps if you would rather have one.
It depends which end of the job. Tripleseat, Perfect Venue and Planning Pod are built around the event once it is sold: running orders, catering, the plan. Picktime is free and built around the eighteen months before that: show-rounds couples book themselves, tastings with a real number of seats, and a date held against a deposit.
Picktime’s free plan covers a booking page for show-rounds and tastings, every space on its own hours, and a confirmation by email the moment a viewing is booked. There is no card and no end date. It is a plan rather than a trial.
Yes, and it is the single most valuable thing on this page. Couples look at venues on Sunday evenings; a page they can book a show-round on at nine at night gets the viewing, and a form that promises a reply gets answered on Tuesday when they have already been somewhere else.
Yes. Take a deposit or a percentage at the point of booking, set per space, and the date is held once the payment has gone through rather than while somebody thinks about it.
Yes. A tasting has its own number of seats and an open day its own number of places. Once one is full the page says so and stops taking bookings rather than letting eleven couples book six chairs. The waiting list behind it is on the paid plans.
Yes. Every appointment sits against the same couple with the date and whatever your team wrote down at each visit, so whoever picks up in month eleven can read the story rather than asking them to tell it again. On the paid plans the booking form adds the guest count and whatever else you ask before the first show-round.
Yes. Each venue keeps its own spaces, its own viewing hours and its own booking page, and they all show in one calendar.
Picktime is not event management software, and that is the honest starting point. Event management tools run the wedding once it has been sold: the running order, the floor plan, the catering numbers, the invoice. Picktime runs the year before that, which is the show-rounds, the tastings and the deposit that holds a date, and it hands over at the point the contract is signed. Most venues end up owning both, and the expensive mistake is expecting either one to do the other’s job.
That is a couple’s question rather than a venue’s, and any page answering it with one number is guessing: it moves with the region, the guest count, the day of the week and the season. It matters at this end for a different reason. A couple whose budget cannot meet your minimum spend is a show-round you were never going to convert, and you usually find that out an hour into it. On the paid plans the booking form can ask the budget bracket and the guest count before a viewing is confirmed, so the Saturday you give away is one worth giving.
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