Hello avid fan base! Or, you know, the three people who read this. Welcome to the next installment of…
CAT AND PETE’S WEDDING EXTRAVAGANZA!
This blog, we’re going to talk about the seemingly endless stress that is finding a venue. As those who have met me know, I do not deal with stress very well. It has a tendency to make me very ill and so it was important to me that this process be kept as simple and as low key as possible.
My first step was to visit hitched.com to view venues in West London. One problem that came up straight away was the price some places were charging. I naively thought that we might be able to keep costs to under £5k and still have the day that we wanted. I was a fool – a fool I tell you! I can’t list all the ones we considered, so I’ll talk a bit about the ones we took a serious second glance at, or went to view.
Ealing Town Hall
What initially drew me to Ealing Town Hall was its size. I don’t have a small family, neither does Pete, so we were keen to find a place everyone could fit inside comfortably. It doesn’t hurt of course that the pictures look like this:
Being the wizard of organisation that I am, I emailed them about a week after we got engaged and asked for a brochure. The prices were more than reasonable – my -£5k wedding was in my sights. My massive party with all my cool party people was going to become a reality – *ahem* I mean our massive party. Yeah.
But of course nothing is every that easy. Upon further investigation I discovered that Ealing Town Hall was closing for refurbishment and would not be open in time for us to do the deed. Way to break my bloomin heart Ealing Council. Anyone would think the upkeep of a historical building for future generations was more important than our day??? (I’m kidding of course, great venue, you do a great job, please continue don’t sue me.) Upon hindsight this venue was not right for us. It was too close to home to really feel special. I think walking passed it all the time before and after the wedding would have ruined the magic somewhat. All things work out for the best in the end!
This brings us swiftly on to…
The Museum of Water and Steam
The Museum of Water on Steam is a lovely place full of lovely people. We went down for a viewing and were absolutely blown away by it all. It absolutely encapsulated for us what a Steampunk Wedding should be like.
There were some snags of course. Due to the building being open to the public all day, we would only be allowed in for the party from 6pm until midnight. This is more than enough time for a reception of course, but once you factor in eating, clearing tables and setting up for dancing, we wouldn’t have a huge amount of time left to celebrate. Another issue was that we would need to pick from a list of catering companies that the museum works with. This is understandable of course – health and safety and all that – it just ended up pushing the budget past what we were comfortable with. This, along with the other regulations that come with having a party in a listed building, meant we would end up making more than a few compromises on what we wanted. To their credit, the museum staff were absolutely brilliant and did anything to try and make this work for us. Alas – it just was not meant to be. Maybe for an anniversary party in future? It is worth noting that while the building encapsulated all things steampunk, I was hoping for a bit more *goth* on the big day. On to the next one…
Chiswick Town Hall
As we couldn’t say our vows in The Museum, we had looked at Chiswick Town Hall to do what I like to call the ‘Legal Doobery.’ The ceremony would take place in one of the smaller rooms, and we’d head off to the Museum for the party. Our plan B for catering was to have dinner in Chiswick and head to the museum for drinks and dancing. That was until:
“Pete…do you want to do just do this in the Town Hall?”
And that was that! The stress was over! This meant that we could have the catering that we wanted, hire our own bar staff, bring in our own beverages and most importantly spend more time celebrating with the people we love.
I’m not going to post any pictures of the venue on here, as I’d like some of the day to be a surprise. Let’s face it though, you have google, if you really wanted to you could find out what it looks like. What the hall does is it gives us a beautiful canvas to work with – the building fits the theme of what we want, its in a lovely location so our friends and family can get home safely or stay in a hotel.
Something we do lose however, is the 30 minute car journey from the ceremony venue to the reception. While this may sound like a plus, I suffer from anxiety, so was looking forward to that time to regroup a little before being *on* all night. I’m sure we’ll figure something out though, even if its just me and Pete heading into a side room for a glass of champagne or two before the party.
Here concludes our hunt for a venue. When all is said and done, the venue was not as important to me as I thought it would be. What really matters is being able to cram as many lovely people in a room to get completely tanked and dance with us all night. I’m sure our guest list is up to that 😉
Planning a weirdo wedding 