We hired the Elvetham hotel as the venue for our wedding. As a location and venue, it’s beautiful, charming and idyllic, which was a large part of why we booked it and would recommend it in this regard. As a business, we didn’t feel it was particularly well run and our experience was at times frustrating.
The hotel has a dedicated weddings team which was initially reassuring for us but throughout the process, there was a lot of staff turnover and poor communication meaning it was us having to organise meetings and take care of most of the details. It didn’t feel like we were getting the benefit of a wedding team but instead we had to be extremely proactive (which is stressful when it’s your wedding). For example, two nights accommodation in the Gardener’s Cottage was included in our wedding contract from the offset, but months later, a family member found the cottage available to hire on a holiday website so we had to inform the hotel of this to avoid double bookings on our dates. There were more issues similar to this throughout the process that required us to have more oversight than we had anticipated. Having said that, Amelia in the wedding team had to pick up the pieces from previous staff members and came in halfway through our planning process, and we did feel she did her best in managing some challenging situations that she inherited.
On the day, the team running the event itself were competent and helpful, and all the food and drink was delicious. The set-up period in the morning was a bit frustrating as the operations manager was busy showing prospective wedding couples around the venue instead of being on hand to help with troubleshooting on the morning of our wedding. We did feel it was inappropriate that prospective wedding couples were being prioritised over the wedding couple on the day and hope the venue can take this feedback on for the future.
Overall, we were glad we chose the Elvetham because the location is truly beautiful, but just be aware that it will likely require a fair amount of proactivity and organisation on your part.