Why I Chose Ufton Court by Gemma Payne
Let me set the scene….December 10th 2013, a Tuesday, a normal boring day at work, a trip to the gym followed by the dreaded journey back home from the big smoke. My boyfriend Brian, greets me at the front door and sent me upstairs to take a shower. I adorned my normal attire for this time of evening and I must as always, at this point look ravishing! Wet hair, no makeup, pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers – hot! I walk back downstairs and into our lounge and it is at this moment Brian decides to get down on one knee, ring box in hand and pops the question. At least he knows what he’s getting from this day forth!
Getting engaged before Christmas was lovely but getting engaged came with one strict rule from my Fiance (love saying that!) ‘no wedding planning until after Christmas!’ Now, I’m a rational person, it’s not like I’d waited 7 years or even thought this day might never come … I could understand, it’s Christmas, it’s busy…right? But surely he didn’t mean ANY planning?!
After some negotiation we agreed I was ‘allowed’ to start researching venues and ideas. Brian and I met doing agricultural courses and so felt a barn would be the ideal scene for our wedding. By Christmas day I had a list of 15 (!) venues that we could visit across 4 counties. Come January we’d whittled that number down and arranged to visit 9 venues in 3 weeks. Ufton Court was the 2nd venue to visit on our list. I felt it could be the one and was super excited about going to see it! Given all the rain we have had recently, it was hard to believe it was such a beautiful sunny day when we went. We could feel our anticipation building as we drove to Ufton through the countryside and surrounding woods. When we turned into the drive, we actually stopped the car and looked at each other. We then proceeded to slowly approach the house taking in the views around us. This felt very ‘us’. We parked the car and headed to the barn. Standing in there, in that moment we knew and both became a little emotional. Being rational, logical people we told ourselves not to get excited just yet but after we spoke to our wedding co-ordinator and asked a few questions, it was everything we wanted, it was perfect.
In the following weeks we did go and view the other 6 venues that were left on the list but none compared. Some of the venues we visited were barns too but they felt a bit too purpose built or they were a barn-looking hall within a large manor house so they didn’t have that slightly rustic but homely feel that we found with Ufton. Needless to say, we booked Ufton Court as our wedding venue shortly after.
In our time, Brian and I have done a few things for charity. One that sticks with us and our poor toes even to this day, was the London to Brighton trek! We like to give when we can and this is another reason why Ufton appealed to our hearts as all the profits from hiring the venue for our wedding goes towards the Ufton Court Educational Trust supporting projects like Ufton Adventure. What better way to top off the best day of our lives than knowing by picking Ufton, we will also be contributing towards such a great charity so close to our own home. To aid in this fundraising we decided we would add a link from our wedding website to our JustGiving page- a safe and secure web page where people can donate money to the charity. It was so easy to do! Ufton have their own JustGiving page -Ufton Court Educational Trust. From here there is a link that allows you to fundraise for them. This then enabled us to customise our own JustGiving page but any donations that are made to our page automatically go directly to the Charity. The donations could come from people we know who just want to give to the charity, or it might be our wedding guests who want to make a donation on our behalf instead of a wedding present which is such a lovely idea!
We are so excited about our wedding as we keep seeing all the lovely wedding pictures on the Ufton Court facebook page and ideas on pinterest. Don’t get me started on pinterest, I’m addicted, but I’ll save that for another blog!
Justgiving page : www.justgiving.com/BrianandGemmasBigDay
By Gemma Payne
