Turn More Wedding Inquiries Into Booked Tours

Wedding Inquiry Response Checklist

A free kit for wedding venue owners, managers and sales leads.

From AILA, the sales assistant for wedding and event venues. Everything in this kit works with your own email and a simple spreadsheet. You do not need AILA to use it.

Why this kit exists

A couple's first message is rarely a request to buy. It is a question. Do you have our date? What does it cost? Can we come see it?

The venue that answers the question plainly, then offers a real time to meet, gives the couple an easy next step with a person. That is the whole idea here. Answer what was asked, invite them to tour, follow up with something useful, and keep simple records so every inquiry has an owner and a next step.

The kit has four parts:

1. A quick-start process and a short diagnostic.
2. A printable inquiry-response checklist.
3. A suggested follow-up framework, an owner and backup routine, and a tracker you keep yourself.
4. Ten editable response templates, in Part 2.

Nothing here is a promise of results. A booked tour is a chance for your team to do what only people can do, which is show the space and earn trust.

Quick start: five steps

1. Write your real answers down once. Collect your pricing, what is included, any minimum, taxes, fees, capacity and tour length in one document. Every template below depends on it. If you cannot answer a question from this page, that is the gap to close first.

2. Open tour times on a calendar. Decide which days and hours you give tours and put them where your team can see them. Tour times are not the same thing as wedding-date availability. Keep them separate.

3. Name an owner and a backup. Every inquiry has one person responsible and one person who covers when that person is off.

4. Make the templates yours. Copy the templates in Part 2, replace every [placeholder] with a true detail, and rewrite the wording until it sounds like you. Delete any line that does not describe how your venue actually works.

5. Start the tracker and a daily review. Log each inquiry, set its next action, and spend a few minutes each working day clearing what is due.

Five-minute diagnostic

Answer yes or not yet for each question.

1. Does one named person own each new inquiry?
2. Is there a named backup when that person is off?
3. Does your first reply answer the question the couple asked, rather than only confirming you received it?
4. If a couple asks about price, do you give real figures and say what is and is not included?
5. Do you check the wedding date and the tour calendar as two separate things?
6. Do you offer specific tour times that are genuinely open?
7. Do quiet couples get a planned follow-up that gives them a reason to reply?
8. Do you stop follow-ups when a couple books, declines or asks you to stop?
9. Does every open inquiry have a recorded stage, last touch and next action?
10. For inquiries received in the same period, can you say how many booked a tour and how many attended?

This is a conversation starter, not a score or a benchmark. Each "not yet" points to a section:

• Questions 1 and 2: owner and backup.
• Questions 3 and 4: the checklist and templates.
• Questions 5 and 6: availability principles.
• Questions 7 and 8: follow-up framework.
• Questions 9 and 10: the tracker.

Five working principles

Answer the question first. A couple who asks about price, a date or capacity wants that answer in your first substantive reply. A receipt confirmation is fine as a courtesy, but it is not the answer.

Keep it a conversation. Ask for one or two things at a time, not a form's worth. If you need a guest count, ask for it in a sentence that also moves things forward.

Two calendars, two questions. "Is our wedding date open?" and "When can we tour?" are different. The first is about your event calendar. The second is about your tour appointments. Answer them separately, and never imply that an open date means a held date.

Nothing is held or booked until you confirm it. Say a date looks open if that is what your calendar shows. Do not write that you are holding it, or that a tour is booked, until your own process has confirmed it.

Use the channel they used. Reply where the couple wrote to you. Do not assume permission to call or text. Move to phone or text only when a couple has shared a number and said that works for them. Some platforms limit when and how you may message, so check the rules of each channel before planning a follow-up there.

Printable inquiry-response checklist

Print this page or copy it into your notes.

When an inquiry arrives

• Log it with a new inquiry ID, the received date and the source.
• Confirm the owner today, or the backup if the owner is off.
• Read the whole message. List every question the couple asked.

Before you write

• Check the wedding date on your event calendar, if they gave one.
• Check your pricing document for the date type and guest count.
• Check your tour calendar for genuinely open appointment times.

In your reply

• Answer each question they asked, in their order.
• State pricing with what is included, the minimum if any, taxes and fees.
• Describe date availability honestly, and say nothing is held until confirmed.
• Offer specific open tour times, or say plainly that none are open yet.
• Ask at most one or two questions.
• Sign with a real name and a way to reach you in the same channel.

After you send

• Record the first substantive response date and time.
• Set the next action and its due date.
• If a tour is booked, stop sales nudges and send confirmation details.
• If the couple declines or opts out, stop and record the reason.

Every working day

• Sort the tracker by next action due. Clear what is overdue first.
• Make sure every open inquiry has a next action.

Ready-to-Use Response Templates

Replace every [placeholder] with a true detail from your venue. Delete any sentence that does not describe how you work. Add nothing that you are not prepared to honor. Each template is short on purpose, so it can be read on a phone.

Follow-Up Framework

A suggested manual follow-up framework

This is a suggested framework for a team following up by hand. It is not a research-proven cadence. Adjust it to your venue and, above all, to the couple.

Count the days from your first substantive response.

Adapt it to the couple. If their wedding date is close, you may compress the timing. If a couple tells you they are just starting and will be in touch in a few months, set the next action for the time they gave you and follow that instead. The couple's preferred timing always beats the template.

Every nudge should earn its place. Each follow-up should give the couple something: an answer to a likely question, a detail about the space, or an easier way to choose a time.

What to do at each decision point

• They reply. Respond, then set the next action for the time they gave you and follow that instead.
• They book a tour. Stop sales nudges. Send confirmation details and any practical information.
• The date is unavailable, or the venue is not a fit. Offer alternatives only if the couple welcomes them. Ask first rather than assuming.
• They decline or ask you to stop. Stop contacting them and record the reason.
• No reply after the close-out note. Archive the inquiry and record "no reply after close-out" as the closed reason.

Owner, backup and the daily next-action review

Owner. One person is responsible for each inquiry from arrival until it is booked, closed or handed to someone else. Write the owner role or staff code in the tracker.

Backup. One named person covers the owner's days off, tours and vacations. The backup needs to see the same tracker and have the same templates.

Daily next-action review. Once each working day, the owner (or backup) takes a few minutes to:

1. Sort open inquiries by next action due.
2. Do what is overdue, then what is due today.
3. Make sure every open inquiry has a next action and a due date.
4. Close anything that has reached its end, with a reason.

If your team is one person, the backup can be a trusted colleague who checks the tracker when you are away.

Inquiry-to-Tour Tracking Template

The tracker: what to record and how to keep it safe

Keep your tracker on your own computer or in your own account. Share access only with the team members who need it. When passing this kit to another venue, share a blank copy.

A blank spreadsheet version is included: Download the XLSX tracker or the blank CSV. You can build the same thing in any spreadsheet.

Use an inquiry ID, not a couple's name, email or phone number. For example, 2026-11-014 for the fourteenth inquiry logged in November 2026. This is an example format only. Keep the key that connects an ID to a person in your normal contact records.

Closed reasons you might use: booked with us, chose another venue, date unavailable, not a fit, declined or opted out, no reply after close-out, other.

Definitions that keep your numbers honest

Workbook stages: New, Replied, In conversation, Tour invited, Tour booked, Tour attended, Closed, Declined, Archived.

Use Contact permission / stop to record Stop after a decline or opt-out. A booked tour stops sales nudges; tour logistics are separate.

The workbook has 250 blank input rows. Enter spreadsheet date/time values in one local timezone. Leave the last three calculated columns unchanged. Set received-date cohort start, end and as-of date on Cohort review before using its summary or due flags.

All distinct valid event inquiries in the received-date cohort, including poor-fit and unavailable-date inquiries. Exclude only duplicates, tests and spam before entry.

The 30-day review marker is a proposed operating window, not a proven sales benchmark. Compare only equally mature cohorts.

This is a current-state sheet, not a historical ledger. Cancelled/attended/no-show are current labels, not status reconstructed at a past as-of date. Use a saved snapshot for a true historical report.

The blank CSV contains input columns only, no styling, validations or formulas. Import dates explicitly in your spreadsheet app.

• Same received-date cohort. Group inquiries by when they were received, such as one month, then follow that group. Do not compare this month's tours with last month's inquiries.
• Tour booked-ever. Counts any inquiry that ever had a tour booked, including one later cancelled.
• Booked, attended and sold are three different things. A tour can be booked and never attended. A tour can be attended and the couple can choose elsewhere. Track bookings and attendance here; keep wedding sales in your existing sales records.
• Booked-on date and scheduled-tour date are different fields. One tells you when the couple said yes. The other tells you when they will visit.

Use these numbers to understand your own process. A change over time does not prove what caused it, and small groups can swing a lot from month to month. Do not measure yourself against someone else's figures.

Share the blank kit

Know a venue team that would find this useful? Please share the blank kit and the blank tracker. Keep your own couples' details in your own files.

Downloads

Introducing Automation Through AILA

You now understand how to build an effective inquiry-to-tour process. What if much of that work could happen automatically?

AILA is the sales assistant for wedding and event venues.

• Answers the question the couple asked, using the pricing, packages and details you provide, in your tone of voice, with a voice profile you review and edit.
• Checks your connected calendar when a couple asks about a date, on Google or Outlook calendars.
• Picks up missing details in natural conversation, without turning it into a form.
• Offers open times, books the tour the couple chooses and sends the calendar invite.
• Lets your team step in at any point. Replying yourself stops AILA.

AILA answers from what you give it, so keep your pricing and packages current. AILA can make mistakes, and you can read any conversation, reply yourself or pause it.

AILA opens the conversation. You build the relationship.

50 replies each month on the free plan. No card required.