FAQ’s about your Devon wedding venue search
(aka all the questions you didn’t even know you needed to ask – we’ve gotcha)
(aka all the questions you didn’t even know you needed to ask – we’ve gotcha)
If we look like the kind of place you’d like to host your wedding, you’ll have a ton of questions you’ll want to ask before you book.
Lots of wedding venues make it hard to get the info you need (why do they do that?!) We’re not one of those venues – we want you to have all the info you need to make the right decision for you about your wedding venue and we want to make it super easy for you to access.
We’ve got a list of wedding FAQ’s for you to read through right now so you can clue yourself up to make the best choice for you.
Grab a cuppa, sit back & read on…
Everyone says when they see the venue for the first time, ‘wow, we’ve never seen anything like this!’ That’s definitely the main difference. Have a look at the photos here on the website and check out our photos on instagram and facebook to see for yourselves. You can have an outdoor wedding in beautiful natural surroundings and if the weather doesn’t co-operate on the day, you don’t have to compromise on your outdoor dream, it’s all taken care of and you and your guests will still be outdoors – in the dry!
We’re not a wedding factory, we don’t churn out cookie cutter weddings, you won’t feel you’re on a wedding conveyor belt here. Some venues do hundreds of weddings every YEAR. That’s not our style. We like to take time in the months and weeks before your wedding and over your 3 days here to devote ourselves to your wedding day, making it as special as we possibly can for you and your guests. We can do that because we strictly limit the number of weddings we hold here.
We see a wedding as much more than just a big party. It’s a privilege to help you share your story and celebrate all the people who have helped shape the two of you who have fallen in love and are making this public and private commitment. These are the people who will be there in later years through the less joyous times of life, the times when you need people to lean on, to take some of the heavy lifting from the two of you. The bonds created on your wedding day will support you for the rest of your lives. Of course weddings are about having a great time and loads of fab food and drink (and crazy dancing!) but they’re mainly about creating memories which weave through your lives, strengthening the bonds that connect you with the ones you love.
We’re also sharing our home here at Lower Grenofen. My husband Steven (referred to by me as ‘the lovely S’) and I live here and we created this venue for our own wedding in 2012 – we really know what it takes to hold a great wedding here! Our home is yours for the day and we want you and your guests to feel super comfy here. If you want a relaxed, laid back place where guests can kick off their shoes, wiggle their toes in the grass and not feel they’re being watched by portraits of long dead ancestors of someone they’ve never met – this is your place. We’re not a hotel or a restaurant, we don’t have any other customers to keep happy; we only hold exclusive-use weddings and only for a limited number of days each summer on Saturdays and Wednesdays.
There are other differences too, our chairs, table linen, crystal glasses and other decor items create a wedding reception you can’t get anywhere else. We have contemporary chairs, table linen in earthy colours (olive, buttermilk and silver grey in case you were wondering!), Tritan Crystal stemware and top quality china that will make your day stand out and set the benchmark for how to have a wedding that feels totally different.
This is a crucial question and one you should definitely be asking. Are we your people?! Your wedding day is one of the biggest milestones in your entire life. Family and friends here to celebrate the two of you, you’ll be creating bonds and memories that will extend for generations to come. From children experiencing their first ever wedding to the oldest generations who’ve seen weddings over decades and witnessed their family grow and flourish. Your wedding will become part of your family’s folklore, a touchstone with your friendship group of a precious shared time that can never be copied, the starting point for those “Remember that time…” moments talked about at other gatherings.
If you’re looking to throw an awesome wedding that reflects the story of how the two of you got here and all the people who’ve helped you along the way, we are your people. If you value family and friends over everything; time over money; authenticity and teamwork; custom-made and hand-crafted (and you have an aversion to wedding chair covers!) then yes, we are your people.
Creating a wedding isn’t just about designing a beautiful event, it’s about creating an emotional experience for you and your guests, memories which family and friends will treasure.
You’re probably paying all or some of the cost of your wedding – so value matters too. I know you’re tech savvy, you’ll do a lot of online research before you commit to your wedding venue. I know you’re interested in the quality of the experience but not about impressing guests for the sake of it, it’s about showing them through the small details how much you appreciate them sharing your day.
My pledge to you: I’ll help you put your wedding together and make sure it’s beautifully delivered on the day. If you need help designing the big picture, I’ve got your back. I’ve got over 7,000 wedding pins on Pinterest so trust me, I’m into your pinterest boards as much you are (I just get to call my wedding obsession ‘work’ – how lucky is that?!). When you can’t see through a problem, I’ll help you find the fix, I’ve never met a wedding problem I couldn’t solve. If your friends and family are cool sources of help and support but you don’t want them running the (wedding) show, I get that, I’m on your side. I understand the tricky navigational waters of keeping people happy AND still having the day you want and I will be there to share your joy on the day when it all comes together even better than you imagined. I’ll guide you through the wedding minefield to create your dream wedding while still keeping it real.
If you want to see what other couples have said about the experience of planning a wedding and getting married here at Ever After, pop over to our reviews page and take a look.
We see ourselves as custodians of this special place that is Lower Grenofen. We’re in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and part of our grounds are designated as a SSSi (Site of Special Scientific Interest). Natural England has found our SSSi to be “100% in favourable condition” so I think we’re doing something right. The SSSi is protected primarily for rare lichens and moss (giving the woods their amazing green-ness) and for the rare brown fritillary butterfly whose caterpillars feed on wild violets which grow in the woods and the garden in Spring. We have 7 different species of bat living on the site and we hear owls in the woods most nights. People have lived in this house for hundreds of years and each generation has added to the place. We’ve added our own stamp too and built something contemporary here that would probably astonish previous inhabitants!
We’ve created two wildlifeponds, which has made a significant contribution to wildlife habitat. We see ourselves as living in the midst of nature, sharing the space with the wildlife (deer, foxes, badgers, bats, owls, newts and frogs, dragon flies). I will confess I don’t like sharing my space with so many slugs…I don’t pretend I have learned to love them…All our stationery is 100% recycled, all our printer cartridges are recycled as are all our glass bottles (and we have a few of those each week!)
We grow most of our own plants, either from seed or from cuttings. We like to decorate with living plants and cultivating our own plants is a big part of what we do here.
We have a green travel plan, which means we insist that guests to your wedding use our bus service. The service is free to all day guests living or staying within a few miles radius of the venue, this covers Tavistock, Yelverton, Horrabridge. Our accommodation list has a full list of accommodation covered by the bus service. The buses will pick up your guests from a central point in Tavistock to bring them to the venue and then take them back directly to their accommodation in the evening. It’s one of our contributions to reducing our carbon footprint.
All our water comes from springs up on the hills. The water in our ponds, water feature and rills runs down from the moors and is gravity fed and eventually feeds into the river.
We’re always looking for ways to improve our greenness, we’ve got plans to be completely energy self-sufficient over the next few years.
We love dogs! We welcome well behaved, friendly dogs here at Ever After so you and your guests are welcome to bring your dog(s) to share your wedding day whether that’s a summer wedding or an elopement wedding. When we say ‘well behaved’ we mean we’ve got ornamental/wildlife ponds at the venue and we don’t allow dogs in the ponds, they can tear the liner and even the loveliest dogs are destructive to the water plants and wildlife. So if your dogs love water, you need to make sure they resist the temptation to go in the ponds! When we say ‘friendly’ we mean friendly to both other people and dogs. Our staff love dogs so they’ll need to be able to cope with strangers (our staff here) on the day and of course we have our own border terrier on site so they’ll also need to be able to cope with Chip who’s a super friendly canine host. If your dog doesn’t do well with strange people or dogs, we might have to say ‘sorry but no’ as we’ve got to be fair to our staff and our own dog – this is his home after all! You’re welcome to have your dog(s) stay in the cottage by prior arrangement but we do ask that they treat the place respectfully. You need to let us know in advance how many dogs and what breed they are so we can be prepared. We’ll have to charge for any damage (including any extra cleaning) if your pet(s) don’t prove to be perfect house guests!You can see some weddings here with dogs in attendance here, here and here. We can also recommend a wedding dog creche service who can look after your dog on the day, including taking them for a dog grooming appointment on the day so they can look their best (of course!) taking them for a walk and taking them for a rest/overnight stay if you wish. You’re welcome to have your dog(s) with you during the wedding breakfast, we don’t mind that although they do need to be well behaved and keep out from under the feet of the serving staff!
We’re not a hotel so we have 2 different accommodation choices available on site…First up, we have our fabulous honeymoon cottage. That’s right, it’s a whole house just for you on your wedding! It’s a beautiful 18th century detached stone cottage with a first floor deck off the bedroom suite. Have a look at our photos of the cottage here on our accommodation page. Obviously you can stay as a couple on your wedding night but also it’s available for either of you to stay the night before with attendants so one or both of you can stay the night before with your wedding party and have hair and make up people come the next day to help you get ready. The honeymoon cottage can sleep a maximum of 6 people (2 people sharing the king and the queen size sofa bed & 2 people on single pull out beds), we provide bed linen for all 6. If you don’t mind people squishing up and maybe bringing in a blow up mattress and sleeping bag, you can have extra people to sleep the night before the wedding.
There’s also a separate annexe with a double bed and en suite shower room. It’s great for any attendants the night before the wedding and the wedding night. As we live on Dartmoor, there’s loads of accommodation available locally for your guests from 5 star country house hotels, boutique B&Bs, self catering and camping. We have an accommodation list with a range of local accommodation from country house hotels (for those who want to splash out) through to boutique B&B’s, self-catering, luxury stargazer shepherd’s huts to camp sites where you can pitch your own tent. We can help you with finding suitable local accommodation for your guests.
I’d love to show you round! For the summer weddings I think it’s essential to come and see us so that we can really talk in detail about your vision for your day and what we can do to help you achieve that. I’ll sit down with you and ask a load of questions (yes I want to know how you met, what your hobbies are, what your favourite foods are!) so that I can get a clear picture of you as a couple, your story and your vision for your day. So email me at email.
Don’t forget that during May to September we have weddings here pretty much every Saturday so we can’t do viewings from Friday afternoon through to Sunday morning because our wedding couple are on site and we offer exclusive use to them which means no-one else wandering round whilst they’re here. If you book with us, you’ll appreciate that when it’s your wedding!
If you’re looking for an elopement wedding, you’re welcome to visit but we find most of our couples just book without seeing the venue first. Some elopement couples book first and then visit us at some point before the wedding for a look round. You’re welcome to do whatever suits you.
We do have a few optional extras you can hire. One is our liveried ice cream trike. You can have luxury ice creams from local maker Langage Farm. If you’re looking for something a little different, we’re one of the few stockists of boozy ices by the lovely people at Pops, made with real alcohol.
We’ve got a vintage hand cart which the lovely S restored complete with striped canopy in two colour choices. You can hire that for a sweet trolley, we can supply the sweets or you can supply your own.
My personal fave are our two pop up lounges, a whisky & cigar lounge and a bubbles & botanicals lounge. I know, how fab do they sound?! The whisky & cigar lounge includes a vintage leather chesterfield, persian rug, potted palms and art deco cocktail cabinet, oh yes and 50 shots of whisky plus cigars. The bubbles & botanicals lounge is decked out in old style Hollywood glam with white leather and plenty of bling plus champagne and speciality gin. You can download full details of the lounges including prices from the Drinks page.
Great! If you want to check availability for your date or you’d like to book a viewing – email me.