November 2019

Hi! I’m Jeni, a Wedding Planner based in the Cotswolds. Each month I offer a Monthly Round Up to share a little more of my life behind the scenes as a leading UK Wedding Planner.

We’re almost at the end of 2019, but there’s still lots to do before the year is out. I’m mid Christmas shopping at the moment, and the Christmas decorations are about to come out of storage! Now we’re in December, I’m allowing myself to feel excitement about the festive season – beforehand just feels a little too early in my mind!

Here’s a little snippet of what I’ve been up to in November…

Business

This year has been the first in a few years that I haven’t had any Winter weddings in the diary, which has felt a little odd, but I’ve really enjoyed spending more time on the tasks and meetings that are usually reserved for January, and also organising myself and the office ahead of a busy 2020.

Many of those tasks are super exciting for me as there’s lots of gorgeousness to come next year, but are also mostly office based for the moment, so I won’t fill up my Round Up with those! But the fun meetings this month have been with some lovely venues and suppliers, like the talented Photographer Zosia Zacharia, the gorgeous girls from The Cotswold Florists, and the wonderful team at Kirtlington Park. It’s so lovely meeting with like-minded entrepreneurs who are doing amazing things in the wedding industry, and it’s just so joyous seeing each other face to face when we all have a little more time to sit down and chat all things wedding planning!

There have been a number of prop hire bookings this month for weddings, with some of our beautiful Nkuku pieces being particularly popular at the moment. The Nkuku Mohani brass lanterns we have are just my absolute favourite, and they lend themselves particularly well to winter weddings, as they look amazing lining an aisle, or as centrepieces for a stylish tablescape, adorned with lots of candles and foliage. One of our recent hire couples, Becky & Dean, kindly sent me a selection of their wedding photos with our lanterns in situ for their wedding at Cripps Barn in the Cotswolds, and they look just amazing!

Photography: Lemonade Pictures

We still have some availability for our prop hire stock for December, so if you’re looking for beautiful brass lanterns to hire in Oxfordshire, do get in touch – I’d love to help! Browse our selection of props here.

Finally, this week was the first month back for the Oxford Wedding Breakfast Club, after a busy summer for all of us. I love this group, and it’s such a brilliant opportunity for new businesses to the wedding industry to meet others, and discuss hot topics in a friendly and confidential environment. For more information, and to join us in the future, click here.

FAMILY & HOME

We met some friends at the newly opened Coppa Club in Streatley, which isn’t far from us at all. We loved it; beautiful setting right on the river, comfy seating and delicious food – what’s not to love?! It’s a great space to meet friends, family, or clients for meetings, so I’ll definitely be back soon.

At the beginning of this year I booked some theatre tickets for a couple of dates (being super organised for the year!), and then completely forgot about them – until a few weeks ago! The first was a Michael Jackson tribute show in Oxford, which was a fab date night with my husband. It’s not the type of thing we would usually go to, but we both really enjoyed it, and it was lovely to do something a little different for a date night!

Bonfire Night was sadly a bit of a washout, but despite the rain I took Bella along to the Fireworks Evening at her school which we both loved. Bella enjoyed the sweets and popcorn…I enjoyed the Mulled Wine ;-).

Last weekend, I escaped to London for a girly few days with a friend, which was just idyllic. We spent Saturday wandering around Covent Garden and Carnaby Street before perusing the delights of Liberty and admiring the Christmas lights, and then we went for dinner at Gold in Notting Hill – which I can thoroughly recommend if you haven’t yet been. It’s on Portobello Road, just around the corner from Westbourne Grove; the food is just amazing, and the quirky cocktails are worth every penny! On Sunday we wandered along the Paddington Basin and stumbled across a Narrow Boat restaurant called Darcie & May Green, so popped inside for brunch. It’s an Aussie style menu, but the setting is just so cute and something entirely different from the norm! Usually I’d go to somewhere like Ham Yard, Daylesford, Duck & Waffle, or Balthazar when I’m in London. I’ve been wanting to go to Granger & Co for a while too, but they operate on a walk-in only basis and I’m not usually in the mood for queuing! I’d love to hear any other London brunch recommendations that you love – send me a message to let me know!

Hope you have a great Christmas (I can’t believe I’m saying that already!), but I’ll post the final Round Up post for 2019 at the beginning of January. See you in 2020!

Jeni x