Last week saw my beloved and I escaping to the beautiful Welsh coast in search of a wedding venue. Unsuccessfully.
Where we stayed had the potential to be perfect. The location was utterly fabulous and the views were simply breathtaking. This was the impressive view from our hotel window at 8am:
So blissfully serene, and yet, despite it's beauty, it just wasn't enough.
I used to visit this particular area a lot when I was a little girl, in a campsite just yards down the road from this hotel, and even just driving through the beautiful scenic roads brought memories gushing back. It was as if I'd continued spending every Summer there, even though it's easily been 10 years since I visited.
In our minds this was the venue. It looked so charming on the wedding brochure and website, and we even began sourcing other suppliers in that area. We were so excited to be staying there, we literally couldn't sleep the night before, so to arrive and find the majority of the experience bitterly disappointing was a bit... depressing. The good points of the venue were actually outstanding, but the bad points just detracted from it.
BAD POINTS
The roads.
This isn't a fault of the venue, not at all, but I am not a very good traveller. The long and winding lanes felt very claustrophobic and when we finally arrived I was so tense I could barely walk. I can't be going through that on my wedding day! It is also pretty impossible to fit buses through them (I know, because we also got stuck in traffic whilst a bus got 'unstuck' from the roads), and because we have guests travelling, we were hoping to provide transport for them. As it stands, large buses wouldn't be able to get through the roads safely, which means guests would either have to bring their car and not drink and leave early, or book a room at the hotel. Which brings me to...
The hotel room.
The hotel room was quite inexpensive for us because we got a 'special deal' as we were looking at holding a wedding there. But the regular cost of the particular room we stayed in is apparently £100 a night. It was just horrible. The walls were paper thin so we could hear everything next door were doing, to the point where we could hear them using the loo. Nice. The TV switched itself on in the middle of the night, which was fun. It was quite small and pokey and every movement resulted in creaking echoing around the room. The bathroom was practically falling apart. It looked like it hadn't been updated since the 70's (hello peach suite), and if it wasn't for the fact that the bath panels were falling off, we could've overlooked it. The shower was one that was connected to the bath taps. We have one like it in one of our bathrooms at home, and we just need to pull a knob up to change it from a bath tap to a shower. Well the knob didn't work, so trying to get ready in the morning was a challenging experience as neither of us wanted to use the bathtub. I could go on... No way would I want my guests to fork out £80 onwards to stay somewhere that could give Fawlty Towers a run for it's money.
The food.
There was a distinct lack of thought for vegetarians. There was no vegetarian option for a starter, which I didn't mind as I was saving myself for dessert anyway, but there was literally nothing on that menu I could have had. For main course they only had three options - vegetable moussaka, Greek salad and Greek pasta. I don't like moussaka, I don't like olives and I don't like feta cheese, so that left me with... nothing. Yum. In the end I opted for some sea bass, which in fairness was cooked beautifully, but I was still a bit disgruntled at the lack of choices. Mr Lollipop also hated his chicken dish. It was smothered in some sort of sauce and he struggled to eat it, bless him.
The service from staff.
The hotel receptionist was nice but that's about it. We were served by about 5 different people during our meal (which took over 2 hours by the way) and each one was less attentive than the first. They had no booking for us in the restaurant, no record of us having a complimentary meal (managed to book us in for the bit we were paying for alright though), and it just seemed to be in complete chaos - not organised in the slightest.
The wedding planner.
The wedding planner forgot our booking, and when she finally turned up she had no idea what we wanted. We spoke to her only the weekend before to confirm everything. Whilst she was showing us around she seemed uninterested in anything we had to say or ask. The first thing she asked us was the date we were considering, then she told us it's already been booked up. She didn't want to know after that. It's not set in stone so I told her we could be flexible, but she still didn't seem to care. Now, if I was a wedding planner, and had potential clients with me, I'd pull out all the stops to make them want to book with us, but this lady did the complete opposite.
The ceremony room.
In keeping with the rest of the hotel, the actual ceremony room was really stuffy and in desperate need of modernising. She also refused to show us the smaller Garden Room (apparently it's the nicer of the two rooms too) because we were having too many guests. We told her between 50 and 100 guests and the Garden Room could only fit 65 in. She clearly only heard 100.
The lack of flexibility.
We don't want a three course sit down meal. It's far too formal for us and the relaxed vibe we want. In the end, she pushed the hire prices up so that if we were to have a late afternoon ceremony, and an evening bash with an informal meal, like a BBQ, buffet or hog roast, it would only cost us £300 less than if we were to have the whole shebang, sit-down meal and all. Somewhat defeats the object.
I know what you are thinking - did we actually like anything? Well yes...
GOOD POINTS
The bed.
In amongst that shabby room was one of the softest, most comfortable beds we have ever slept in. Even Mr Lollipop loved it and he prefers firm mattresses. Lush.
The reception marquee.
There are not enough words to express the absolute beauty of this. It was more than a tent on a hill aside a glorious beach. It was just fabulous, and this is the view our guests would have had all day and night. Sigh.
The view and location.
I've gushed enough about it, but both were just spectacular and the saving grace of a truly shoddy venue.
My dessert.
My summer fruits sorbet was amazing. Orgasmic even. I'd drive all the way there through the horrible roads and be served by the obnoxious staff just to have it again. Well, not quite. But my God it was good.
The vegetarian breakfast.
Mr Lollipop didn't like the evening meal but he thoroughly enjoyed his breakfast, ("You can't really go wrong with bacon and sausage though" were his exact words) but my vegetarian option was really, really tasty. I wish the rest of the menu considered vegetarians as well as the breakast did. The 'sausages' were just scrumptious.
So, we didn't enjoy our night away. Well, that's not completely true - we had really therapeutic walks along the golden coast and the weather was just glorious... but to be fair we have that on our doorstep. I wish we'd read some reviews before we went to save ourselves some dollar, because it seems that we aren't the only people to have this opinion. The venue clearly think that the idyllic location is enough, and they rely on that to do the hard work for them. Phil and Kirsty were wrong - location, location, location is not everything. That's a definite NO to holding the wedding there, and so, the search continues...
xoxo
