The Big Day: Part Three: Onto the mansion!

I left you in Part 2 in the vicarage garden. We bid goodbye to all those who were not coming onto our reception (it had strict rules, including no stilettos with a square heel under 1cm sq!) and drove off with CBC's old flatmate in his Mercedes in hope that our instructions would lead everyone there safely. They did, except for our lovely photographer and a few other, whose Satnavs died!).


 The place of our reception was a place long known to me and featured several times in this blog- Valentines Mansion which, if you are a Great British Bakeoff fan, was the setting for the Celebrity special series, earlier in the year.







 It is a gorgeous Georgian mansion that fulfilled all those Catherine Morland and Henry Tillney/Elizabeth and Darcy dreams. Also, it was really important for us to feel that our venue was not just a marriage machine which several others seemed. This is a place which is used by the community for and the public all the time for a variety of different uses. It was, however, a little difficult in terms of the fact that it is quite a blank canvas as you just hire the venue, the rooms and the tables and chairs and everything else is up to you! Great in some ways, but rather daunting!

However, it has an amazing series of gardens and places to explore which are very beautiful as you can see from the background of the pictures above!

We arrrived at Valentines and guests drank prosecco and us non-alkies drank rose and elderflower fizz, made by my Mum with canapes.  It was really nice being able to chat to friends as they arrived in clusters though I did keep looking around for where our lovely, lost Photographer was.

Eventually, she found her way which we were relieved and thankful for.  How horrid it is to be lost in an unfamiliar place.  The family went off for some photos, though very few and CBC and I did a few and then we joined the guests for dinner.

Valentines is a little quirky and very Regency in that our guests had to be divided into different rooms:  The Holcombe room with wide fire place which led onto the veranda was a very grand affair for 10 friends, the bird room, quirkily holds cabinets, once full of stuffed birds, now full of origami creations, and held 12 fields. The gallery held 28 friends and various contemporary art paintings (and the evening entertainment) and finally the Drawing Room upstairs held the remaining 50 people, including us!

 Dinner and decorations: Long before the wedding, I had spent many many evenings using a butterfly craft punch to cut literally thousands of turquoise and music score paper butterflies.  Believe it or not, one very clever guest guessed the composer (Gustav Mahler, in case you're wondering) from the butterflies on his table!).  These were scattered all over the tables like confetti and also my little sister (the blonde bridesmaid) made all our name cards with some of the music butterflies and smaller vellum ones she punched.

 
Flowers: All my dear blogging friends were party to the disaster of the late-blooming wildflowers and so plan B was to buy plants for the tables but this also went awry as those available at the time were awful and motheaten and quite simply not worth the money so instead, the morning of the day before, a friend and I simply went to Tescos and bought bunches of flowers in shades of red, orange, yellow and white and I issued a general plea for vases as well as locating about 10 in charity shops that day!  My mother spent a while arranging them the night before and please tell her they look pretty,because she thought she did them badly which I firmly refute! (please ignore the doll below which made it into all the cake shots!)

 

Our caterers provided a delicious 3 course meal which I believe everyone enjoyed- I certainly did!

The speeches were after dinner which were lovely on behalf of all three parties- my Dad gave a nice speech, which only mentioned my aged 3-year  obsession with toilets once, CBC's speech was generous and kind to all the many people we had to thank and lovely towards me, citing the magic of music camps and rabbits which were integral into our getting together and his Best-man's speech was quite frankly, the nicest and most tame Best-Man's speech I have ever heard and only involved a few embarassments for CBC which I, of course, wont mention here, *Cough Cough,missing planes*!


 Treasure Hunt:  Right after dinner, our venue hosts needed to clear the tables for the evening reception so we had planned a Treasure Hunt to ensure that everyone enjoyed and got to see the wonderful and extensive grounds of the Mansion.  .
Each team received a map of Valentines, a list of clues and the treasure hunt leader (our furtherest travelled guest- from China!!!!) showed them a hyena to kick off the first clue (Answer to the hyena was a Haha!)
 The treasure hunt was that little bit too hard and cryptic and What we DID not bargain for was how highly competitive the teams became and how they doggedly refused to give up the chase.   We divided them into 3 teams- Owls, Pigeons and Rabbits and they each had to find the letters hidden in the Valentines gardens and features by solving cryptic clues. Each had their own treasure, wrapped up and hidden in the anagram location, within the mansion.  We were very lucky, having laid them the night before (CBC and treasure leader were gallavanting round the park at 9.30pm!!!!) that the public did not choose to take them, especially as some of them were hidden in the Kitchen Garden which also houses the cafe!
Our entertainment for the guests also included some outdoor games which we had purchased:

Archery:
 


Croquet: which, like the treasure hunt, also got a little too competitive!!!
 
Rather later than planned, was the cutting of the cakeS!!!

The first cake was a French patisserie cake which was a lovely custard, strawberry and summer fruits light sponge with chocolate curls which came from our favourite family-run business, Le Moulin in Hornchurch.  It was covered in fruit, including Physalis (and sadly,  I didn't get to eat any!)


The second was rather lovingly created by my Mother,who makes amazing cakes. She spent months on this fruit cake, handcrafting over 600 flowers so I could have my wildflower meadow in cake form, if not in real flower form.
 C 

It was so exquisitely made and so personal and unique and we loved it!  She even had special Swarovksy letters made for the top.

I was just so sad that she had, by this time, gone home sick, as she felt really ill and didn't get into enjoy her moment of glory.

Right after our photos and cutting of the cake, I went off to the Regency Parlour to change into my evening outfit as there was no way I would be able to swing dance in a long dress.


My dress of choice was a Vivien of Holloway white satin dress with turquoise stars which I teamed with a turquoise sequinned belt of old and a pair of flat canvas shoes from Shoe Zone (glam aren't I?!)  and the obligatory swishy petticoat I already owned!
 Our first dance, which you must have seen in my wedding day video was a lindyhop routine to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,  which we had SUCH fun learning and dancing to! 
Straight after our routine, the Cunning Plan Ceilidh band kicked off with our fun ceilidh with the absolute sweetest caller!
 A constant stream of people danced all evening and the band were so kind to stick around so late as we actually started the ceildih 2 hours late after delays over speeches, cake cutting and having to do the photos at that late time!

 
One particularly special thing for us was that they agreed to play and teach Childgrove, the dance that my ultimate favourite heroine and hero- Catherine Morland and Henry Tillney first dance together in Northanger Abbey, the TV series.

 

Whilst all this was going on, other things were afoot.  Food upstairs in the drawing room, sweetie buffet in the Holcombe room and my favourite part of the entertainment.

You have long known of my hat obsession and extensive collection.

I decided that though I couldn't afford a hired PhotoBooth, what I could do was to bring my own camera and tripod and most of my hat collection.

These, I set out onto a table at some stage after the meal including the Mansion's own hat stand along with other props.  This proved to be the hit of the evening with a constant stream of people trying the hats on, taking photos and generally having a laugh!

Ha ha, photobombed!!!

I think I got them all back!!!


After the Ceilidh finished, a set of 90's disco music rounded things off.  It then remained my duty as the hirer of the venue, to try and clear it up in the space of an hour which was a little stressful considering the amount of things to clear, the amount of helpers and the amount of headache!  However, we achieved this and finally CBC, myself and family were able to set off to at last get some sleep.

We had a wonderful time at the Reception as did our guests and the only thing I would do again is to try and organise more help and a better system of clearing up at the end!
 

I will probably round off these posts with a few more things I wanted to write or include, but I fear this will never get published if I don't hit the Button now!


Photos Copyright of Karen O'Reilly at www.kaphoto.co.uk