Guest post

    by Jeffrey Cleaver

    Director of Silver Pear Weddings, Oxfordshire

Swapping a London-based career in Interior Design for a move to the country and the decision to host weddings, more than ten years ago now, we thought the two or three we might host each year would be a pleasure and a way to regenerate the house and grounds.

Because we didn’t have the experience or the contacts or the budget for anything much of our own we offered the grounds and barn at Friars Court as a ‘blank canvas’. More by accident than design that approach carved a unique niche for us; since then we’ve discovered the significant demand from couples eager to have something ‘different’, something that’s personal to them.

For a bride, a ‘blank canvas’ allows her a greater degree of autonomy and freedom but that freedom is no “free lunch”: it means liaising with each and every supplier rather than purely with the clip-board-wielding event manager of an in-house team. So coordinating several suppliers equals work, time but, hopefully, not too much added stress. We’ve built up a really lovely group of suppliers over the years, most of them have now all worked together on the same weddings (some have even had their own weddings here) so there is more of a ‘team spirit’ which should help the wedding almost, as one bride put it, plan itself. Read more »