A wedding venue told me it was “accessible.”
Then my fiancée and I arrived and were immediately staring at a hill that felt borderline dangerous as a wheelchair user.
I joked she might want to kill me by our wedding day with all the stress of planning. She laughed, looked at the hill, and said:
“I won’t. The venue might.”
We recently got engaged and started touring wedding venues around the Pacific Northwest, and honestly, part of this process has been so absurd that I keep bouncing between laughing and wanting to cry. Nothing exposes people’s definition of accessibility faster than wedding venue shopping.
Before every tour, we ask the same question: “How accessible is the venue?”
Disabled people learn quickly that photos don’t tell you much. A venue can look gorgeous online and still become completely unusable the second you arrive.
Sometimes there’s a small lip or awkward transition point and you can work around it. Other times you show up and realize the entire accessibility plan was basically:
“Well, somebody could probably help you.”
At one venue this week, there were technically ramps throughout the property. The problem was that some of them were so steep they felt genuinely unsafe. The pathways were gravel. Some were too narrow. Several doorways were so tight I couldn’t even fit through them to see parts of the venue.
At one point we were told:
“Well, we’re accessible, just not ADA compliant.”
Which, respectfully, is the whole point.
The longer this process goes on, the more I realize that for a lot of businesses, accessibility still means “we’ll figure something out if a disabled person shows up.”
We’re not looking for improvisation on our wedding day. We’re looking for autonomy.
If I need three or four people helping maneuver me through my own wedding venue, the venue is not accessible.
My fiancée and I aren’t just touring venues. We’re silently running calculations the entire time:
• Can I safely get there?
• Can Canine Companions® Lovey navigate this path?
• Can I fit through that doorway?
That changes the experience completely.
What makes this especially strange is that these venues are selling beauty, intimacy, serenity, “your perfect day.” And many of them really are beautiful. If I were nondisabled, some of these places would probably be incredible options.
Accessibility in hospitality spaces still feels like an afterthought. Some of it has crossed so far into absurdity that my fiancée and I have started laughing during tours because we genuinely don’t know what else to do.
What’s wild is that most reviews never mention any of this because the people affected by these barriers often never book the venue in the first place. So the feedback loop never happens.
Disabled people deserve better than spending joyful moments navigating workarounds.
What’s a place that claimed to be accessible until you actually had to use it?
#Accessibility #WeddingPlanning #InclusiveDesign #AccessibleSpaces