The seven questions every couple sends in the first email, answered with the actual numbers. If yours is not here, it is probably a supplier question — send it anyway and we will tell you who to ask.
Everything moves indoors and nothing is cancelled. The long hall seats the same hundred and eighty, the ceremony runs under the orangery glass, and we make the call with you at eleven on the morning itself — not the night before, because the forecast changes overnight more often than not. There is no weather surcharge and no separate marquee to hire.
Music stops at two in the morning, the bar closes at half past one, and guests can stay in the grounds until three. The limiter is set to 96 dB at the desk, which is a full band at volume — in eleven years no act has hit it. Amplified sound is indoors only after eleven, which is a condition of our licence rather than a house rule.
No. We keep a list of six kitchens we have worked with for years and most couples choose from it, but any caterer carrying public liability cover and a Level 5 hygiene rating can use our kitchen. We charge nothing to bring one in, and we take no commission from the ones on the list — which is why the list is short.
Twenty-five percent holds the date and comes off the balance. It is refundable in full for ninety days, then half until six months out, then not — by that point we have turned other couples away for your date. The balance falls due four weeks before. If we are the ones who cannot open, you get all of it back, deposit included.
The Saturday collection holds the venue from noon until two in the morning — fourteen hours — and the dressing rooms open at nine. Supplier set-up happens inside that window, so if you want a florist in at eight we add the morning at cost rather than pretending it was included all along. The weeknight collection runs four until midnight.
Level or ramped access to the ceremony room, the long hall and the orangery, with two accessible WCs on the ground floor. The bridal suite is on the first floor and has a lift. Parking for forty cars on the gravel, four of them accessible bays beside the door, and a taxi marshal on the drive from midnight.
Both work. We are licensed for civil ceremonies in the ceremony room and in the walled garden, so the whole day can happen without anyone moving a car. If you want the church in the village it is a four-minute walk through the gate in the east wall, and we build the timings around the vicar rather than the other way round.