We held our wedding reception at Elmhay Park in March 2022 and were able to spend a lovely weekend with our nearest and dearest.

We were initially drawn to Elmhay due to the whole 3 day package that was on offer. This fitted perfectly with our plans to have a wedding where we could make the most of every moment with our friends and family, whilst minimising the stress and travel for them as much as possible. The idea of having accommodation onsite for all 3 nights of the package was extremely appealing, and the thought of the bride staying in a castle the night before probably helped us to visualise the start of our fairytale wedding. It meant that for the Bridal Party, the occasion could be an entire weekend rather than just a single day.

Due to booking the wedding through lockdown, we initially viewed the venue via a virtual tour with Heather. This was helpful enough for us to view the key parts of the venue in challenging times and gave us enough of a flavour to make our decision. Once the lockdown had lifted, we were then able to view the venue in all of it’s glory and we couldn’t have been happier with our decision.

A couple of months before our day, we were able to visit Elmhay again to try the different options for our wedding breakfast meal. This was a fantastic opportunity to see the venue with tables set up, and also sample all of the possible menu options. Finding options that will be great for all guests is never easy, but the tasting experience allowed us to be confident in our choices as well as have many of our questions answered.

The tasting day also gave us the opportunity to meet Karl, the fantastic General Manager. Karl is extremely knowledgeable of the venue and eventually ended up being our Master of Ceremony. And what a fantastic job he did over our wedding weekend. Nothing was too much trouble and he was always contactable to help us with anything we required (even helping with turning on the heating in the castle in the middle of the night).

The decoration of the venue on the day was fantastic, meaning that all we had to do was deal with arranging our own table centres. This was supported by delicious food and fantastic service throughout the day.

The opportunity for the 3 day package made the occasion even more special. After a wonderful day with all of our guests, it was amazing to be able to stay on site and spend some time together, relaxing and reminiscing about the day. I think that this addition is a really wonderful idea and helps you to get everything out of the occasion that you can.

We were very struck by the flexibility showed by Heather and the team at Elmhay. They really are able to adapt to however you want your day to run, giving you access and freedom across the locations to arrange them and utilise them as you wish. This is really helpful as so often we had a vision for the day and their flexibility allowed us to bring that to life.

The only negative that we could point to is that it was sometimes difficult to contact the team. We put this down to being busy with all of the rearranged weddings after COVID, however, when it came to the main event, we cannot fault the team at all. They were constantly accessible and charming throughout.

Without a shadow of a doubt, our special day was made more special by the experience put on at Elmhay. Our guests have commented on how fantastic the venue and food was and that is also the lasting impression that we will take from it.

Our wedding day was better than I could've imagined. Our guests were happy, everything ran to time, the sun shone despite every single day around our wedding being torrential rain!!! The hospitality staff on the day were brilliant - attentive and polite. I wouldn't change a thing, as it really was the best day of my life.

However, I do want to share some of my less positive experiences so other couples are fully aware. Communication from the office team wasn't great, both in terms of speediness as well as attitude. I often felt as though I was making their job difficult (even when asking simple questions) with the tone I got on the other end of the phone. The lady who ran the cottage accommodation booking, I believe her name was Sarah, was great. I mostly communicated with her via email, and she was always quite quick at replying and very polite.

Our assigned wedding coordinator, AnnaMarie, did not impress me. On our first planning meeting, she was late. No forewarning, we had to ring the office to be told (quite bluntly) "She's on her way". When she did arrive, it was all taken as a bit of a joke and no apology was given. However, the meeting went well otherwise and she seemed on it which eased my initial concerns. She told us multiple times during the meeting we would receive our typed up itinerary that evening - two weeks later we still hadn't received it. Our wedding was still a couple of months away, so I avoided chasing but after two weeks I felt it was appropriate to check-in, to which I was told I'd receive it the next day. Two days later, I still didn't have it.

When we finally did get the document, there was no apology for the delay. At this point, I'm starting to stress about how she would be on our wedding day, but lots of other reviews priased her highly so I used that to ease my worries. We were told by AnnaMarie that she would come and see my first thing on the wedding day, and then be around for whatever we needed throughout the morning prep, and of course during the wedding itself. I, the bride, did not see her until 1pm (an hour before the ceremony). My now husband went to the reception room in the morning with his best man, as they wanted to check some things out ahead of the speeches. AnnaMarie was nowhere to be seen, and even when they rang the office and were told she would be there soon, she did not appear.

During the wedding reception, our MC tried to find her multiple times for various things, including to ask the canapes to speed up (only negative on the hospitality, the canapes came out on one tray every 15 minutes - not quick enough to feed 90 hungry guests!! We asked the kitchen to speed this up and were told "this is how we do weddings, don't worry"). She was rarely anywhere to be seen during this time, and then at around 8.30pm she came to me and said she was leaving and the bar staff would look after us for the rest of the evening.

Long story short, I was not very impressed with her throughout our planning or on the day itself. I am borderline OCD when it comes to planning, and so had thought of EVERYTHING when it came to how I wanted our day to go. Our day was perfect, no thanks to AnnaMarie. If you are a big planner, and are confident you could "run" your wedding without a coordinator, go with Elmhay. The venue is stunning, the food is to die for and you will look back at memories fondly.

If you want to rely on a wedding coordinator, that you have paid for might I add... don't book here. Your wedding day should be stress free and someone else should be responsible for running around making sure everything is perfect - other venues will ensure you get just that!!

Our day was just perfect, everyone complimented the venue, food and service Elmhay provided on the day. They came to us as soon as we went into the garden after the ceremony ensuring we had drinks and canapes before the guests had entered the gardens which was great, asked us throughout the wedding breakfast if we needed more drinks, if the food was ok and were generally just lovely. I couldn't thank Clare and Lena enough.
Unfortunately though, the lead up to the day was made extremely stressful with no thanks to the managers at Elmhay, communication was poor and there was details about our day that we didn't actually find out until the morning when Clare told us (even though I had called Orchardleigh and emailed our original coordinator multiple times asking the same questions). The coordinator made me cry from being so unhelpful at our itinerary meeting 6 weeks before with a lot of comments like "don't worry we have done this before"... Yeah well guess what, I haven't so tell us what's going on!
They also straight up lied to us in the itinerary meeting, saying we were unable to have banquet tables and that we had to redo all our table plans unless we were hiring the tables and then the week before our wedding, posted on Facebook "look at our beautiful banquet tables for the wedding yesterday". I left a comment asking if the tables were hired or supplied by them and my comment was deleted! Contacted the venue stylist who confirmed these were Elmhay's tables!
On the day, during our ceremony, the couple in the House hired a helicopter, which is fine but the communication between the house and Elmhay Park are obviously lacking as the helicopter took off next to our ceremony DURING our ceremony so now our video is spoilt by the sound of a helicopter and our guests shouldn't hear what the registrar was saying! They literally just needed to wait 5-10 minutes and we would have been fine 🤦🏼‍♀️
Overall, the venue is beautiful but points to take into consideration, if you are getting a venue stylist you are probably fine but if you are doing the coordinating of suppliers etc yourself, Elmhay are not easy to get answers out of, you won't hear from them regularly enough in my opinion and little things like the Facebook comment deletion, helicopter take off next to the ceremony, wasps EVERYWHERE, really did stop our day being as perfect as hoped, especially for the huge amount of money this venue cost.

What an amazing venue! Our magical adventure began the night before the wedding at Orchardleigh Castle. Relaxing in the hot tub and enjoying the beautiful views prepared us all for the big day. On the day of the wedding our fabulous co-ordinator Karl ensured that everything ran smoothly and helped calm any nerves. All the staff were amazing and every-one commented on how good the food was. As a mother of the bride I could not have asked for a more perfect day for my daughter and her new husband. A special thank you to Nic for all her help organising the wedding, Jacqui for being so amazing with the accommodation and Karl and Lena for all their help on the day. A huge thank you also goes to Chris the owner for making their dreams come true.