Our Wedding Diary

Early January 2009
We visited the Manor at Hanchurch without a prior arrangement. We were given a friendly welcome, a tour of the Manor and a wedding information pack. The Manor seemed the perfect wedding venue, friendly staff, beautiful location and an elegant venue for an intimate wedding.

Mid January 2009
We met with the General Manager for the first time to book the Manor for the wedding ceremony and wedding breakfast. We paid a deposit to secure the day and were promised to receive the booking confirmation and a wedding option information pack within the next week or so.

We also reserved all seven bedrooms for the night of the wedding as the wedding information pack stated that if all the rooms were booked the venue would be exclusive to the wedding party.

4th March 2009
We telephoned and emailed the General Manager to chase the booking confirmation and wedding pack. No response.

Early March 2009
The Manor telephoned to say that the computer had crashed and all booking information had been lost apart from the deposit information. They asked us to meet with the General Manager to confirm the date of the wedding and wedding requirements.

Mid March 2009
We met with the General Manager to confirm the date of the wedding, room requirements for the wedding ceremony and wedding breakfast, guest numbers, menu choices (including a trio of desserts), champagne reception drinks and canapes, and room requirements for evening of wedding.

The wedding breakfast menu was titled sample menus and contained four choices, no vegetarian. We were told we could mix and match the menu dishes. We asked whether dishes could be tailored to our requirements and were told that the Manor is a fine dining restaurant, the restaurant is 2 AA Rosette/Michelin star and that the only choice was the four sample menu options.

We requested a trio of desserts, consisting of three desserts from the sample menus, which was granted.

We confirmed our guest numbers and the General Manager asked whether any children were going to be present on the day, to which we replied yes, our 18 month old niece. The General Manager said that the Manor only catered for adults and therefore we would have to make our 'own arrangements for the infant', which included bringing our own high chair and food.

We then discussed overnight accommodation and were told that children were not allowed to stay overnight in the Manor as it was an adult only venue and other guests could not be disturbed. We were shocked to here this, as we had discussed our wedding guests with the Manager in January, which included our 18 month old niece and were never informed that she wouldn't be welcome at the Manor. Since we had reserved all of the bedrooms our niece would only disturb our wedding party guests and this would not be a problem. We said this, but were again informed that the Manor was adult only. We asked whether our niece could stay in one of the bedrooms at the end of the hotel with no adjoining rooms so not to disturb any of the guests and we were told that it would not be possible.

That evening we spoke to our guests and contacted the Manor to cancel six of the seven bedrooms reserved for the night of the wedding as our guests wanted to stay overnight at the same venue.

There was evidently no flexibility at the Manor.

27th March 2009
We received the confirmation of booking and wedding itinerary breakdown with costs.

We had been charged for 2 nights accommodation in the Newstead Suite and room hire charge for the wedding breakfast which was not applicable when hiring the venue for the wedding ceremony. We queried the overcharge and the email reply on 1st April 2009 from the General Manager was as follows; ''Yes, correct, a typing error, there is only one hire charge''.

2nd April 2009
We emailed the General Manager for clarification regarding the beef for the wedding breakfast, we specified we did not want it rare in the previous meeting, however there was no response.

13th May 2009
We contacted the Manor as the wedding was 3.5 weeks away and suggested a meeting to discuss the final wedding arrangements. We were contacted by the Manor and informed that the General Manager was on holiday.

21st May 2009
We met with the Manor and were told the General Manager was off work unwell (2.5 weeks before the wedding). We were asked to discuss all of the wedding arrangements again as they had no records. We were presented with new wedding breakfast menus. The menus were more expensive and although titled 'sample menus' we were told that we were unable to deviate from the 3 available choices as the restaurant was fine dining and the restaurant was 2 AA Rosette/Michelin star.

We asked for our original wedding breakfast choices to be honoured and were told that the beef would have to be rare as this is the way the chef cooked beef in a fine dining restaurant (this was repeated to us and very patronising). We were also informed that they wouldn't be able to accommodate the trio of desserts and they didn't know why the General Manager had previously agreed to this.

We asked for the General Manager not to be present on the day of the wedding as we found her patronising and disorganised. We were assured that this wouldn't be a problem as they doubted she would be back at work on this date.

22nd May 2009
The Manor telephoned saying that if we didn't want the General Manager to be present on the day of the wedding we would have to send an email to the Manor explaining our reasons for this request as she was the General Manager and would normally be present on the wedding day.

It was obvious that the Manor were preparing a case against the General Manager. We did not email.

28th May 2009
The Manor telephoned and informed us that the General Manager had retired. We asked about our wedding breakfast options which were outstanding clarification, being the beef and trio of desserts.

We were informed that the chef wouldn't prepare the trio of desserts as they didn't have suitable crockery.

When asked for clarification regarding the beef we were told repeatedly that the Manor was a fine dining restaurant and were given an explanation of how the beef was cooked and served rare. We made the suggestion of cooking the beef for slightly longer than usual for our wedding party, as it was a special occasion and we were informed that the Manor was fine dining and the restaurant was 2 AA Rosette/Michelin star and the chef would not accommodate this request.

We were told that the chef was not willing to provide medium beef, it was rare or another option. This meant that our wedding breakfast was not confirmed with only 1.5 weeks to go before the wedding.

We asked the Manor to speak to the chef again and to contact us with options.

30th May 2009
We telephoned the Manor to discuss wedding breakfast options as we had not heard from them.

We were told that the chef would only serve rare beef as the Manor was fine dining and the restaurant was 2 AA Rosette/Michelin star.

We were told that we could not have the trio of desserts as previously agreed. The acting General Manager said ''It is not that we are not willing, they are really difficult. All of the desserts are made on the premises and we have not got the manpower to order and plate the mini desserts''.

We were confused, as we were being patronised about the Manor being a fine dining restaurant and our request for the medium beef being below their 2 AA Rosette/Michelin star standards, whilst at the same time being told that the trio of desserts was too difficult for them. We had chosen 3 desserts from their wedding sample menus, so knew that they could make them but the chef was not willing to accommodate the request or suggest another trio of dessert option.

We asked to speak to the chef, as from conversations with the acting General Manager it appeared that the chef was refusing our requests.

The acting General Manager said that she would speak to the Chef and get back to us.

31st May 2009 - 7 days to the wedding
The acting General Manager did not telephone. We chased her reply.

She said that the chef would accommodate our medium beef request.

She said that the trio of desserts was impossible and we would have to choose one dessert. We were so tired of the conversations we chose a new dessert.

We telephoned our wedding guests with the wedding breakfast options and telephoned the Manor with the dining requirements.

We were told by the acting General Manager that we couldn't mix the vegetarian meal options with the other menu, ''If a guest is having the beef as a main they must have the meat starter, and the vegetarians must stick to their options, you cannot mix the menus together''.

We had not been told this before and queried why mixing the menus was causing a problem. We were told that meat eaters must have the meat starter and main and the vegetarians must have the vegetarian starter and main, the meals couldn't be mixed.

We explained that we had given our guests both options and we wanted to confirm the choices with the Manor. The acting General Manager said it was not possible to mix the meals. When we queried why she said that the dishes had been priced individually. We said that this would make it easy for the Manor to calculate the meal costs, as individual starter costs could be added to the individual main costs. The acting General Manager replied that it was not possible and we explained that we could not understand why, as it seemed straight forward. She said she would speak to the Chef and get back to us.

Later that day the acting General Manager telephoned us to confirm that she had spoken to the chef and he was willing to accommodate the mix of dishes if we could provide the information by Monday as they needed to order the food.

We emailed the wedding breakfast requests immediately to the Manor.

5th June 2009 - the day before the wedding
We visited the Manor in the afternoon to deliver the wedding cake and other wedding sundries. We were asked by the acting General Manager if we would move the wedding breakfast time from 6.00pm to 5.30pm as there was a private dinning party that evening.

We were astonished that they were asking us to change the itinerary the day before the wedding. A wedding that had been booked 6 months in advance and was costing considerably more than a private dining function was evidently of unimportance to the Manor. Our reply to this request was 'no'.

6th June 2009 - The Wedding Day
The day was perfect, the food was good (the beef wasn't rare!) and the staff were excellent. Fortunately for us the acting General Manager wasn't present and the two members of staff present on the day were faultless, Jonathon and Pascal.

We were given a wedding card from the staff at the Manor which was a nice touch.

We didn't have the pleasure of meeting the chef.

The Newstead Suite Room wasn't overly clean, there was glitter over the sofa, which hadn't been cleaned from previous guests.

We were presented with the final bill on the wedding day and the wedding breakfast was more expensive then previously agreed, as was the champagne.

The owner of the Manor was dining at the Manor that evening, which maybe explained why the Manor asked us to change our wedding breakfast time the day before the wedding. When the owner saw our niece she said 'oh a child' and we felt obliged to explain that she was a Flower Girl at the wedding.

7th June 2009
We departed the Manor at 6.00am, no breakfast was offered as the acting General Manager said we were ''leaving too early for breakfast'', we were however charged for breakfast.

Overall
We found the venue elegant, newly renovated and perfect for intimate weddings.

However for us the prewedding discussions, inflexibility, Chef, General Manager and acting General Manager were really disappointing. No effort was made to make you feel special or to provide the basic level of customer service that you would expect when arranging a private function. This poor service, the persistent battles and unreasonableness on the part of the Senior Management Team at the Manor up to the day of the wedding tainted our overall wedding experience and we wouldn't recommend.

The other staff at the Manor, Jonathan and Pascal were however excellent and most accommodating.

At the time of our wedding the Manor had been awarded 2 AA Rosettes for the restaurant. There was no Michelin Star. A restaurant that has a reputation for excellence does not have to continually patronise customers by stating that they have such awards. The food and dining experience says more than words ever could.