Venue elation!

I was sceptical when my friend told me that, much like the dress, you will just know your venue when you visit it. We'd seen several 'never in a million years' venues, one good venue and one exceptional venue. Both of these of course had their drawbacks - the good venue, while affordable, had ugly 'rainy day' rooms and was slightly cramped, the other was so, SO expensive I was thinking of selling things to afford it. To be honest, with the latter I thought I loved it so hard that I would do anything. I was so wrong.

We went to Syon House yesterday to have a look, after the nice man at Kew Gardens told us it was the only venue he'd seen to rival Kew. It's astonishing. It has a beautiful ceremony room that has ancient statues surround it, which is perfect. The 'rainy day' rooms are stunning. The drinks courtyard is just delightful and the reception venue is a huge conservatory that looks amazing when lit up. And all for around £3k less than Kew and £4k more than Pembroke Lodge, so it's still on the expensive side but definitely more affordable.

The thing that really sold us was the fact that they refuse to allow their caterers to charge for corkage as they think it's a rip off. I mean, talk about integrity! The venue has it in spades. Plus, it has so much of its own decoration that you really don't have to go overboard, so no chair covers, no elaborate flower arrangements, just two pedastal arrangements and the table decorations - that's it. The lights in the conservatory are colour-changeable and your function manager will organise that for you. What could be better?

Interestingly, they start taking bookings for the next year on the first Monday of April, in person. It's a good system that means you get a flurry of bookings and then can see where you stand. We thought the people and the location were wonderful and we're looking forward to booking with them.

Taking it a bit too far

You guys should check out this blogpost, or even this article on the same thing. It's in turn reblogged from Fuck Yeah Wedding Ideas but I believe they have since taken this down - can you guess why?

Themed weddings can be cute, but not if your theme is Colonial Africa, not if you are white and have clearly requested your servers be black and especially, especially not if you are in South Africa. Christ on a bike.

Er, is there a payment plan?

We saw Kew Gardens on Saturday. Oh. My. God. It's possibly the prettiest wedding venue we've seen so far, and also - of course - the most expensive. Three times as expensive, to be precise, and it doesn't include things such as furniture, plates or glassware for the reception as other venues can do.

If you had a budget of £30k+, I would highly recommend it, especially for Spring/Summer weddings. The flowers in bloom with their smells, the wildlife roaming around (lots of geese) and the light in the glass Conservatory would be truly memorable. I can imagine even rainy days being highly romantic.

I can also imagine feeling fairly upset that you couldn't afford such a gorgeous place! No wonder it is completely unbooked for the month we were looking at - in contrast to Pembroke Lodge.

You really have to ask what is included in the price at the venues you look at - and always ask if the price includes VAT. We thought Kew wasn't SO bad - until we realised that VAT added an extra £3k to the price!