Venue Hunting

Hey guys, sorry, I kind of slipped off the radar there! Life’s been pretty busy, we’re both back working full-time after the week off we had when we got engaged, and any spare time is currently being assigned to either Anthony’s company work or wedding planning. It actually leaves very little time to write about said wedding planning!

So since my blog post about the proposal, a fair amount has happened – I turned 23, our provisional wedding date changed, we’ve started discussing the smaller (and what we thought would be easier) details, we’ve celebrated our six year anniversary, and most importantly… we’ve chosen a venue! I’ll discuss each of these events in more detail below, I have a feeling that this is also going to quite a long blog post… maybe now is a good time to go and grab a cup of tea!

So, my birthday – we went back to Oxford for the weekend – I worked out that this was the first time I’d spent my actual birthday with Mum for around five years! The morning was relatively chilled; I opened my presents (a lot of which were wedding related at my request), went through my memory box that I keep at Mum’s house and we had a lovely breakfast, before getting all dressed up and heading into Oxford to have dinner and drinks. The memory box bought back so many memories and actually inspired a few ideas for the wedding reception – I’ll definitely delve back into it before the day!

While in Oxford we met up with Victoria (one of my university housemates who now lives in the city) and had a reminiscent photo taken outside Costa – it was here that Anthony asked me out all that time ago, and it seemed a waste to just walk past! We then said goodbye to Victoria and joined Mum and Martin for a few drinks, and headed to a gorgeous little French restaurant. The food was delicious and the most exciting part of the evening was us setting a provisional date for our wedding (though it now turns out that it is not to be)!

As we’d set a provisional date, we started browsing potential reception venues as a couple not long after. Our ceremony venue has been decided since long before we got engaged – Anthony is Catholic and has been attending the same church since he was born. We’ve known that we would get married here since we got together, and I saw the church in person recently; it is the most beautiful church I have ever seen and I cannot wait to be married there!

When looking for reception venues, we both had very similar visions which made it much easier! Ideally we wanted a barn, but we were also conscious that a lot of our guests (including us!) will be travelling a fair way, so a nice hotel would also be a good option. I looked on the Guides for Brides website, and narrowed down seven venues. I'm not going to talk about all seven because I also don’t want to give too much away about the venue that we’ve chosen, but out of all the enquiries, we booked to view five of them. We also realised that we should probably check with the church that they are available on the date!

Our enquiry with the Priest led to our first hurdle. Unfortunately, the date that we had chosen falls during lent, which would mean that we couldn’t have the ceremony that we want. Therefore, we’ve had to pick another date – it shook us slightly initially, but we then realised that it didn’t really make a difference, and actually the date that we’ve chosen is closer; we are already within the year countdown, which seems crazy, but so exciting! The new date was also still available at all the venues we’d enquired with, so really wasn’t an issue at all.

This brings me to our anniversary. It fell on a Saturday this year, so it seemed stupid not to take advantage of this. Initially we looked at going to a West End Matinee, but couldn’t find anything that we fancied/was available. We then looked at doing a couples spa day (hilarious I know!) but couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t break the bank, especially as we’ve already paid for tickets for the Cursed Child in a couple of weeks as an anniversary present to each other. It then hit me that it would be such a perfect day to view wedding venues! It falls at pretty much the same time of year as we will be getting married, it is a really romantic thing to do and it is one of the few days that we have off work together! So on Saturday 11^th Feb, we jumped into the car and headed to Oxford to view four of the five venues we’d arranged to see.

As I said earlier, I'm not going to talk in detail about all of them, but there are two that I would like to mention (neither of them are the venue we’ve chosen). Our first viewing was with Lains Barn. This venue was SO stunning! It has a beautiful rustic interior, was small enough to be intimate but not so small that we would have to cut our guest list, it’s in the middle of nowhere so would feel very exclusive, it's really close to the church; at face value it was perfect for us. However, we felt that it may actually have been slightly too small – for the day it would be perfect but once we included all our evening guests, it may have been a bit cramped, particularly as a February wedding means it's likely that we’ll have bad weather and so everyone would be stuck indoors! It was also very expensive – we got tripped up with the classic wedding issue of having to add on VAT. I highly recommend this venue for people with larger budgets and a smaller guest list, and probably a time of year where there would be a better guarantee of good weather, and I would love to attend a wedding there! But we felt that in the end it wasn’t for us.

The second venue that I wanted to mention is Milton Hill House. This venue was so closely tied with the venue we’ve chosen, it was a really close call between them! I have to say that the main selling point for this venue was the wedding coordinator we were conversing with. She was so incredibly accommodating, so friendly and was so patient with the extensive list of questions we had! She also provided us with a glass of Bucks Fizz each to celebrate our anniversary, it was such a personal touch and really meant a lot to us. The venue itself was also beautiful, as we were walking around I could see all the photos we would have, the imagery was so clear to me. The only reason we have chosen the venue we have is that the reception room we are planning to hire is exactly what we both pictured, and the wedding coordinator there has also been incredibly helpful. We’re both thrilled with the venue we’ve chosen, but also sad to let Milton Hill go!

With regards to our chosen venue, I will reveal more in future blogs! I just don’t want to jinx it before we actually book. But I will tell you that it is in Oxfordshire, it is a hotel and will produce some beautiful photos! We’re both so excited, as are our families. As soon as we walked in I got goose-bumps, and the more we looked around, the more I wanted it. Anthony is much more logical and loves to play devil’s advocate, but I could see that even he was falling more and more in love with this venue every second. After a day or two, we decided that we don’t even need to see any other venues – this is definitely the one.

Since my last blog post, we’ve also picked our colour scheme, and know roughly what we will be dressing our bridesmaids and groomsmen in. We’ve picked the song for our first dance (definitely keeping that secret!), started discussing evening food options, and I have officially asked my bridesmaids and Maid of Honour if they would like to join us on our special day. Anthony has been throwing some slightly unconventional ideas at me, which I seem to love shooting down instantly (sorry Anthony!), but after some exploration, I realise that actually sometimes his ideas are actually better than mine. One example is when he suggested navy tablecloths (navy is one of the colours in our colour scheme) – it's not very traditional so I immediately said no. He then showed me this photo, and I was sold instantly!

It’s so exciting planning this wedding together, and I'm so happy that Anthony wants to be an equal partner in the planning of our day. We’re determined to fight what we’re calling “Bridal Bias” together – Anthony’s role in our wedding is far more than just putting on a suit and showing up on the day. Though I may get carried away at times in trying to fulfil my personal vision, I love how we’re both able to tweak and merge and grow our ideas together. Anthony, this is a personal message to you – I'm sorry I'm so stubborn, I do love you and I promise I’ll try harder to listen to your ideas!

Thanks for reading all of this, I hope it wasn’t too long! I will be sharing more details with you as they become more final, I just don’t want to jinx anything or reveal too much and everyone know everything about the day. I don’t know when the next post will be, we’re planning to book the venue in the next two weeks, but will then take a bit of a break from planning. I’ll do my best to keep these posts interesting and keep you relatively up to date! But for now, I’m done, so I’ll catch you again soon!