Chloe A.
3/5
Beautiful setting but disappointing experience
We had our wedding reception at the Meadow garden in June 2024 and enjoyed the beautiful setting and relaxed atmosphere of the pole marquee. It was the ideal location just outside of Ely and provided us with the flexibility to have external catering and service for drinks, afternoon tea and evening pizzas, along with the ready to go facilities of the toilets and bar alongside the marquee. We appreciated the welcoming, family run nature of the business in the lead up to our day.
From our initial visit in Jan. 2023, Karen demonstrated nothing but flexibility and helpfulness, showing us pictures of summertime weddings and inviting us back for visits once the marquee was up. In terms of the setting and venue we were very pleased, we had a few minor hiccups on the day with some maintenance/general tidiness jobs being left (but we were happy to address these on the set up day) and a lack of parking for our 120 guests (despite being assured this would be fine) but what really disappointed us was the approach and management on the day.
For context, we had always confirmed with Karen that we would provide and serve welcome drinks and then those on our tables, adhering to the allocation of 1/2 bottle of wine or equivalent pp. After food, tables would be cleared with the paid bar open. With a total of 120 guests by the evening we knew they’d be no issues with the 50 adults requirement of running the bar and Karen even agreed she’d be happy with us serving our own single welcome drink to evening guests.
Unfortunately what played out was us arriving to our drinks reception where our staff running this had been made to feel very unwelcomed, as a bride and groom this behaviour and rudeness was not what we wanted to be directly witnessing. There had been a misunderstanding over more than one welcome drink being served. Nevertheless this seemed to be brushed aside and our team made sure that despite the hot weather, drinks were limited.
However, during our seated meal Karen decided to take this matter up with our parents and family at the top table, resulting eventually in an outburst at myself the bride over how we’d be incurring a ‘huge corkage fee and we’d breached everything in our contract’. Whatever the situation or ruling she felt we had broken, this was not a matter to be argued about with our parents on the day, in front of all of our guests, many of whom commented on the frosty atmosphere they were greeted with at the bar. In the scheme of the day, this relatively minor matter could have been discussed calmly or brought up the following day but the outburst was completely unprofessional, embarrassing and deeply upsetting, on what should have been our special day.
The end result was that we never saw Karen for the rest of the day, as her family continued to run the bar for the evening, and to avoid further aggression we disappointingly never provided a drink to our evening guests. We similarly only met with the wider family when we cleared up early on Sunday and have not received anything in a way of an apology or response to our email after the day. Even more shamefully the response to this review being added to their Facebook page was to delete the site completely.
Perhaps a lesson learnt to ensure every discussion and small detail is confirmed in writing and perhaps that the Meadow Garden is not quite so flexible and relaxed after all. We would never want to detract from how beautiful a venue this is and in so many ways we were really pleased with our choice, we just hope going forward that lessons are learnt and not repeated for future couples.
