( feature )
It happens so fast. Summer weddings, however, can be a
nightmare of bad decisions, out-of- control costs and catering cock- ups. But only if you let them… By PAUL MARLAND
S
crumbsmag.com
ome brides, of course, are ruthless – and won’t settle for anything other than that flouncy vision they first dreamed of, often at eight years’ old and high on Beauty and the Beast. The Cotswolds really works for these guys:
it’s picture-postcard English countryside pretty, a place Cameron Diaz would do a house-swap and find love. Other brides are more cerebral, thinking on the spiritual
component of getting hitched, and our patch fits them like a foxglove too, surrounded, as they are, by all that nature and history and tradition. A classic Cotswold wedding is like a lazy afternoon in the Shire, before silly Bilbo brought his travel trinket home and dark strangers on skeletal horses started snooping around. Whatever the bride and her style, two things matter
more than anything: her exes need to be able to stalk her wedding snaps on Facebook and think ‘wow, she looks hot!’ and, two, everyone needs to have a fun, relaxed time. And that, assuming your friends and family aren’t complete dicks, is down to two things: the venue and food. Luckily, wherever you sit on the rustic-to-refined
spectrum the Cotswolds can provide for it. Here are our favourite local wedding locations (many of them celebrated for their food on non-occasion days too), and a handful of the best local caterers…
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BARNSLEY HOUSE AND GARDENS “We had a wedding in early June,” says events manager Natalie Rolls of this top-notch, intimately-sized Cirencester country house hotel, “where the bride was concerned about the height difference with her husband-to-be. Her solution was to stand on a beautiful blue vintage suitcase throughout! It made for a great photo in front of our Gothic Summerhouse in the sunshine. As far as food is concerned you have to think of the masses, and beef seems to tick the most boxes. But it’s with the extras that you can have some fun. The most popular wedding cake I have seen was three tiers of Chocolate Refrigerator Cake. Simple but utterly delicious – and there were no leftover scraps of boring Victoria sponge the next day! As an alternative to bacon butties for midnight snacks, our Barnsley
Mains
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