Our Little Black Book

OUR PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Over the years we have made lots of friends along the way, and now we want to share some of that with you –

How to use this page

These are the people we would put in front of a client, and the list has been built the slow way — by working alongside them. Nobody pays to be on it, nobody is here because they sent us work, and we take nothing for a referral. That is the only reason it is worth reading.

Venues. Twenty-four of them across Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, from Tudor barns to fields with nothing in them. We cater at most of these regularly, and we are on the recommended caterer list at The Tudor Barn Belstead, Haughley Park Barn, Boxted Hall, Henham Park and Woolverstone Hall. If you are looking at one of them and want to know how catering there actually works — the kitchen, the access, the timings — ask us, because that is the sort of thing we know and it is rarely on a venue’s own website.

Marquees and tipis. Four companies we work with regularly. If you are getting married in a field, book the marquee before almost anything else and let us talk to them directly rather than through you.

Photographers, florists, styling and bars. People whose work we have watched at close range, repeatedly, at four o’clock in the afternoon when things are running late. That is when you find out who somebody is.

Two things this list does not have yet: celebrants and musicians. Both come up constantly and we would rather add names we can genuinely vouch for than fill the gap for the sake of it. If you have worked with somebody good, tell us.

Planning the food as well? See marquee wedding catering, our wedding menus, or what is included and how booking works.

How to use a supplier list without being led by it

Every venue has a recommended list and most of them are honest. But it is worth knowing that at some venues a place on the list is paid for, either as a flat fee or a percentage of what the supplier invoices. That cost does not vanish — it arrives in your quote.

So the useful question to ask any venue is simply: is this a recommendation or a commercial arrangement? Most will tell you straight. We are on the recommended caterer list at several venues in this county and we pay for none of them, which is the only reason we are comfortable saying any of this out loud.

Book in this order

Venue first, obviously, because everything else depends on it.

Then the marquee, if you are having one. Marquee companies get booked further ahead than almost anybody realises, and the structure decides where the kitchen goes, where people eat and what the wet-weather plan is. Booking catering before the marquee is doing it backwards.

Then photography and catering, roughly together. Both get booked twelve to eighteen months out for a summer Saturday.

Then everything else, which has more availability than the internet will lead you to believe.

What we get out of this page

Nothing directly, which is the point. We take no commission and no referral fee in either direction, and nobody on this list pays to be here.

What we do get is easier days. A wedding where the marquee company, the photographer and the caterer have all worked together before runs measurably better than one where they meet in a field at eight in the morning. That is worth more to us than a referral fee would be.

If you are planning the food as well, start with wedding catering or marquee wedding catering.

Six of the venues below are ones we work at often enough to have written up properly — where the kitchen is, how we set up, and what tends to catch people out. Those are Henham Park, The Tudor Barn Belstead, Boxted Hall, Woolverstone Hall, Shimpling Park Farm and Haughley Park Barn.