Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:00a.m.
We've been together a few weeks now, so I thought it was about time that you met Our Venue.
Just quietly, the selection of wedding venues is average at best in Wellington city, and while I would have loved to have had our wedding at a gorgeous vineyard in the Wairarapa, there was no way our budget would stretch that far.
Sudbury Fields was the first, last and only venue that FH and I looked at.
We had quite a long list of requirements that our venue had to satisfy. It needed to be an all-in-one ceremony and reception venue, as we didn't want guests having to trek across town from one to the other. We really wanted somewhere BYO, and somewhere that we could choose our own caterers (all for the sake of our budget). It couldn't be anywhere too formal, and we weren't going to be married in a church.
Sudbury Fields ticked all of our boxes.
The venue has a purpose-built rustic wooden barn with drop down marquee sides. If the weather is perfect we can have an open air reception, but at the first sign of rain we can drop the marquee sides and have a cosy and intimate marquee wedding!
Another great feature of the venue is the limited size – it comfortably seats 60 people. This means we can have the small wedding we hoped for, without the guest list guilt! Which is, you guessed it, another way to keep our costs down!
The website doesn't really do the venue justice. Although relatively new to the wedding business, the owners have been running corporate retreats and team building at their site for some time. They seem to be a lovely couple, and have been nothing but helpful to deal with so far (a far cry from other wedding vendors I've read about in the weddings forums lately!).
I'm so glad I stumbled across this venue while trawling through the results of my usual “Wedding Venues Wellington” Google search.
Now in my excitement I've probably neglected to mention the one teeny tiny hiccup we've come across so far with the venue.
My future mother-in-law suffers terrible hay fever and a related allergy to horses! And bless her, she was too sweet to mention this while I rambled on about hay bales for the ceremony seating and a horse whisperer show for the guests.
I suspect my next Google search will be “how to effectively prevent hay fever”, despite FH's “she'll be right” attitude!