Firstly the venue wasn't finished. We booked our venture based on the outside and garden for photos to be taken. Less than a week before it was still a construction site. My mum ended up calling the owner and she claimed that the outside and lake with bridge that was being built were the house next doors and not the hotels and we were promised nothing but they did get it cleaned up, the rubbish out the water and planted some flowers.
The night before the wedding my youngest woke up at 2am with a raging fever. I stayed at the venue the night before and had to phone my parents to drive out with paracetamol and ibuprofen. This went on all day with him and luckily one of my guests was a retired paramedic and always carried a kit in his bag so he gave him the once over and the hotel were amazing giving him as much ice cream and fruit shoots as he wanted free and were ready to drive us to the hospital if needed. We ended up leaving before breakfast the next morning for an emergency appointment where he was diagnosed with scarlet fever and vomited all over the car.
The meal was delayed due to the checking of my son which meant a few guests on husbands side drank more and one wife followed her husband into the male toilets to have an argument.
My cake was late and I had to call them up and find out where they were. Guests had started arriving by the time the cake showed up. The decorators were also late. Then they brought the wrong fasteners for the bows and the sashes were being torn because of them. I was told I would need to pay for the sashes they damaged trying to put on the wrong fasteners they brought after turning up late. Ended up getting a refund but it took countless phone calls and nearly a month for it to happen.
There was a pub crawl in the bar attached to the venue. One guy was left behind after the bus driver refused to let him back on. He was off his face on drugs. He kept wandering into the hall and trying to get served at our bar. One for the guests knew him because he was friends with her little brother. They tried to get him to leave but he became violent. He attacked a couple of the bridal party but just shoving them looking for a fight. Then the bus arrived to take guests home. He got confused and demanded to be let on the bus. Of course our driver said no and locked the doors. He broke the emergency exit window and climbed down the bus, caught the driver and broke his nose. Guests had to break the bus door open to get the guy off the driver who was in his 60s and trapped in the drivers seat. While 2
Of my other guests were nurses who tended to the driver the venue called the police. I went outside to see my husband who was having a cigarette. I walk out and this guy has my husband on the floor and is laying onto him. Just as the police arrive my husband got out from under the guy and had him pinned to the ground. The police run up and restrain my husband instead of the junkie. They didn't put 2 and 2 together and realise the man in a kilt with the woman in a wedding dress were not who they were here to arrest but rather the guy in jeans with the torn T-shirt and blood all over him who then started attacking them too.
He was charged with assault, disturbing the peace and possessions of class B drugs and as it was a bank holiday weekend he spent the weekend in jail and was fired after he got bail on Tuesday for not turning up to work on Monday or Tuesday during his trial period.
The bus driver was taken to hospital in an ambulance and the police took my guests home in police cars. The photos of 5 of them piled in the back of one police car all passing the officers hats around are hilarious!