Your South Wales Wedding - November/December 2020 (Issue 76)

I’ve worked as a wedding coordinator at Stradey Park Hotel & Spa for 10 years, so knowing the quality of service the team provide, there was nowhere else that would live up to it for me. Luckily my groom and family agreed, so it was an easy decision and one that we are so glad we made. We had traditional canapes and a three-course meal during the day. In the evening, we opted for a rustic- style buffet, which Stradey Park Hotel & Spa made look incredible. For the dessert, we had wedding cake, a sweet table and an ice cream trike full of different flavours that our guests could help themselves to. Some of our guests decided to stay at the venue, so we made gift bags for each room. We incorporated a Yankee candle, a customised box of matches, a box of Welsh cakes and a hand-written note saying how much we appreciated them sharing our day. My father has his own graphic designs company, so we had lots of fun with that. He created our own wedding branding that we used for all our stationery and signs. Instead of a traditional order-of-the-day, we had a wedding day post. This had a short video of how we met, the proposal and pictures of the hen and stag dos for the guest to have a giggle over. For our favours, we wanted something edible, so we created gift bags with sweets in. We chose our favourites and asked our daughter, Hollie, to pick one of hers to make it more personal. We also collected photos of all our guests and used these as place cards that they were able to keep. Our cake was three separate creations from Carys Cakes that we placed on homemade wooden stands. We incorporated our favourite flavours; chocolate fudge, red velvet, carrot, white chocolate and raspberry. 38