2023 Year in Review

As we celebrate our penultimate wedding of 2023, we look back on what has been another fantastic year, amazingly our 21st year hosting incredible celebrations.

After a snowy start, the year got underway with our usual period of closure while we completed improvements and maintenance to the venue. This year this included installing a beautiful mosaic pizza oven in the courtyard, which has been a huge success, with guests able to enjoy the theatre and balmy evenings chatting to the chefs as they play garden games and enjoy the sun setting behind the walnut tree.

We also made use of our closure to update the bathrooms in the Farmhouse. These all now feature rain head showers, beautiful contemporary design, and super luxurious mattresses on all beds for a dreamy night’s sleep!

Our final project was to hang a monster glitter ball in the dancefloor which again has been a huge hit!

Our on-site pre-wedding welcome suppers have unsurprisingly grown in popularity, and many of our couples have enjoyed a joyous evening catching up with friends and family over a delicious meal and drinks before a relaxing night’s sleep ahead of the big day. For dining options for a welcome supper, please do get in touch, and we can provide you with menus.

This year, we have taken some big steps forward in our quest for a more sustainable business. Sustainability has been a core value here for decades, but we know that it can be easy to become complacent, and the urgency of tackling climate change requires constant progress. We, therefore, took the decision to join the Sustainable Wedding Alliance and work towards accreditation. In so doing, we have undertaken detailed CO2 emissions calculations and set ambitious targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and landfill waste in the coming years. The land on the farm is now growing acres of wildflowers which are incredibly efficient absorbers of carbon, meaning that as a site, we are currently carbon negative. We’ve had the joy of witnessing the abundance of species of plant, insects, birds, and mammals attracted by the return to natural flora and fauna. We’re really proud to be finalists in the Net Zero Leader category in the Sustainable Wedding Awards and are looking forward to the ceremony in February.

We have celebrated so many incredible weddings and have loved working with our couples to bring their visions to life. Our team has worked tirelessly, hosting not only weddings but also Open Days, Taster Evenings, and many meetings. We’re hugely grateful as ever to our wonderful network of wedding suppliers and to our exceptional caterers, Ross & Ross. Our relationship goes from strength to strength as we enter another year of partnership. Couples have consistently praised the standard of catering and service, our incredible team, and their appreciation of having the venue to themselves over three days.

Some of our couples have really put our offering to wonderful use, hosting friends in bell tents across the two nights with al fresco welcome suppers and brunch for all.

Hermione has continued to pour never-ending love and work into the gardens here, which go from strength to strength and continue to provide the most beautiful backdrops for our couples.

As autumn drew in, and we look ahead to 2024 and beyond, we, as usual, evaluate what more we can offer our couples and improvements we can make. We have recently upgraded our glassware to ensure elegant and sophisticated tablescapes while also ensuring our cocktail and drinks offering is top-notch. More on this to come!

As we look ahead to the New Year, we will be improving the cottage kitchens, upgrading some of the starlit drapery in the marquee, and further beautifying the approach to Crockwell. The year ahead has a lot in store for our family, the venue, and our couples with some of the biggest changes to come. Watch this space!