Manor By The Lake — Attraction in Cheltenham

WEDDING REVIEW

We have just had our proper wedding event held here as a sequel wedding following our tiny intimate ceremony last year due to Covid disruption. This covers how we felt across both occasions.

VENUE (5) The venue itself was beautiful and well isolated from the rest of Cheltenham - you would never think it was in the middle of a town! The Manor itself has a lovely garden to wander around with a "lake". Both occasions we have seen lots of wildlife including ducks, squirrels, rabbits, and even a fox. We had our wedding in the Autumn which additionally had the advantage that the vines on the side of the Manor change colour from green to red which looks beautiful. The indoors are also as impressive as the exterior - what we particularly liked was there was a good mix of formal and informal rooms allowing you more opportunities to vary the tone of your wedding (other weddings we've been to only had formal rooms which can limit options for providing relaxed areas for guests to chill out). If you can we recommend staying over at the Manor - the bedrooms are lovely and each one is themed differently. The venue provides a Virtual Tour on their website to allow you to explore at your leisure - I highly recommend checking it out as it allows you to get a good feel of the place and what the venue provides.

PRICE (4) The price of hosting a wedding there is fair. They do some starting packages which are very good value for what you get, but you will likely want to personalise and add on some extras to customise the wedding. These are pricier but not unreasonable in our view for what you get. Big plus: you get EXCLUSIVE use of this venue when you have your event there unlike other weddings we have attended previously which should be taken into account when comparing with other places.

PLANNING SERVICE (4) The venue staff really helps with making planning the wedding easy. This ranges from face to face discussions with the staff to talk through what you want to do, a Taste event to sample the menu, and a big folder of information to give you ideas and let you know what is available to use. They were able to accommodate all of our requests including allowing us to bring a pinball machine! The one area which I felt that let things down was finances: They gave statements that broke everything down which was good but make sure you check your statements very carefully as quite a few errors were made, even new errors occurring on reissues of statements following corrections. It would be nice if the internal process/software was updated to reduce the number of errors made.

SERVICE ON THE DAY (5) The staff on the day will go out of their way to ensure that your day is going smoothly and ensuring that you are happy and will guide you through so you are not left unsure what to do. They will also check with you occasionally to ensure everything is fine or report any issues on their end (there was a slight hold up on their end after dinner getting the evening entertainment ready but was hardly noticeable). Entire event itself went very smoothly and was well organised on their end.

FOOD (5) Both the main and evening food was delicious and and there was plenty of it so you will not go hungry! Everyone we asked also said the food was lovely so top notch here. We didn't decide to go do down the Canapé route but instead we for an antipasti station instead. This is a little pricier but went down really well with everyone and had a lovely varied selection and meant people could go up for bites when they wanted rather than chasing down staff carrying around the food!

CONCLUSION Outside of Covid disruptions the planning and the day was very stress free and enjoyable. It was not cheap but I felt we got very good service and quality for what we paid for. I would highly recommend but be sure to check over the agreed details and...

We had the most perfect wedding day at Manor by the Lake!

The whole day ran so smoothly and everything was exactly as we wanted and more!

The planning process from beginning to end was so easy and any questions that we had were answered promptly!

From first setting foot into the venue I knew straight away that that was where I wanted to get married. It was so beautiful, full of character and hidden gems around every corner!

We were able to drop all of our decor, clothes, wedding favours, signs and everything that we would need for the day the evening before and this made the morning of the wedding go so easily as I only had to worry about staying calm and getting myself ready. While we were dropping this off I remembered that we had forgotten to make the children’s activity packs. They brought out a few samples of what they could provide and this was sorted straight away without any fuss! These packs ended up being such a big part of the wedding as they included stickers with different sayings (best dressed, favourite couple, most drunk, best dancer etc etc) which the children were able to hand out. These stickers became such a good conversation starter for the guests who had never met each other before (‘oh I see you’re best dressed, apparently I’m the cutest couple’) and were such a lovely touch to our wedding that I never would have thought of!

The Rock Bar (we nicknamed it the Grooms Room) was so perfect for my husband and his closest friends and family. They were able to enjoy getting ready and relax before all of the other guests arrived and it was so nice that they were able to have a special morning as well as the bride!

While we were getting ready we were left to enjoy ourselves and although this was such a small detail it made so much difference to myself. I struggle with anxiety so it was so lovely to not be overwhelmed with questions or have strangers in my calm space. With this being said I was always well informed of what was happening and how everything was going. Elena did such a wonderful job of keeping me up to date but allowing me my space.

Speaking of Elena. Wow. What an incredible woman! She went above and beyond anything I would have expected from the event manager! She was incredible with the amount of young children we had at our day and was just unbelievable! One of my closest friends has two young children, the youngest was only 2.5years old and during the wedding breakfast she did not want to cooperate, she ending up sitting on her mums lap and wouldn’t let her mum eat her food while it was still hot. Elena took it on herself to entertain little Zara for the whole wedding breakfast! She carried her around, entertained her, played peek-a-boo with the chefs through the kitchen door and she allowed a single mum to enjoy her food while it was still hot! Not only was she brilliant with the guests children she was also brilliant our own 2.5 year old and even went to the lengths of changing a dirty nappy while me and her dad were busy! Please Manor by the Lake, give this woman a raise! Every single one of my guests commented on how good she was and she is still talked about fondly 6 months later!

The whole day was so seamless and ran perfectly, we honestly could not have dreamed of a better day, if you are thinking of having your wedding here please know that you have nothing to worry about at all!

There was a small issue with the toilets in the ballroom in the evening but even this was handled brilliantly and guests were easily directed to other bathrooms that they could use and it had no impact on our day at all!

If you were to book a wedding with Manor by the Lake please be reassured that you will be working with an incredibly competent team, you will receive a professional service from them and you will not regret your...

We booked MBTL for our wedding back in 2020 just after the first lockdown, we where shown around the venue by Jose who answered every little question we had being first timers! We instantly fell in love with the place even though it had just reopened for business. Booking this gorgeous venue was easy and stress free.

Throughout the whole planning process we where able to contact the manor and nothing was too much for them to handle. We where soon invited to our first planning showcase event, which meant we where able to meet for of the staff and get shown around again. We then went on to have our tasting session and wow! what great food that was. We where able to meet our chef and chat to him about any concerns we had with allergies. Shortly after we where allocated our wedding planner Siobhan who was amazing throughout the whole process. Towards the end of our journey I was constantly sending her silly emails, however she never seemed bothered on what it was I had asker of her!!

We stayed in the cottage that is on site the night before which made the wedding celebration start that little bit earlier, this is a huge recommendation of mine. We where very well looked after that night and the following morning. Our breakfast which was delivered to us was a perfect size and went down like a treat- Thank you to Connor for brining everything over and making everyone laugh and smile.

On our big day (17th April 2022), everything ran very smoothly. Both myself and my husband cannot thank the manor for how perfectly our big day went, especially a huge thank you to our event organiser- Leah who checked up on us regally and continued to make us laugh and smile. From start to finish both of our experiences where more than we could have imagined (apart from how hot the rock bar and bridal suit where whilst getting stressed and trying getting ready hah). We did have few mistakes and hiccups on the way- HOWEVER a quick chat with Leah and these where quickly resolved. Having a first look of the ballroom was very special and we both had a realisation moment of wow, all our hard work and it looks flawless. Our only negative was the lack of attention during our wedding breakfast, we swapped out our wine for Kir Royal's and unfortunately my glass remained empty after the first one, even though I was offered wine on a couple of occasions. Other guests also remained to have empty glasses and looked at us for top ups..this being said the food was perfect and that was the buzz around the whole room.

Our evening was also better than we could have imagined, we where gutted to say goodbye to Leah but we where given James who looked after us also very well and made sure we kept laughing.. although sorry James, Leah is certainly not the boring one;). We hired a DJ from the manor and don't get me wrong he got us dancing however there where moments where our guests got bored and left the dance floor (possibly because we are all about the 90's and 2000's which we requested). The ending of our party was exactly what we imagined and if we could we could do it all over again next weekend we would!

We followed our night by moving over to the rock bar with the honesty bar, which finished our night off perfectly!! The overnight manager was excellent! The overnight experience is also a huge recommendation of ours, without this experience the night would have ended at 12am...it meant we kept our wedding celebrations going that little bit longer!! We spelt like logs and all of the rooms are stunning. Breakfast the next morning was perfect, there was more than enough food for everyone!

Thank you to everyone at MBTL for the most amazing experience and a day we only ever dreamt of having- you guys made our dreams all come true!! Mr and...