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My Best Western Wedding Experience - Forced to Eat With Our Hands!
We launched through some side doors at pretty much the exact moment the bride put her first steps on the runway.
Embarrassed at being late and a little ruffled, my girlfriend, little boy and I found two spare chairs and settled. While all the boring stuff was going on "I do", "I do to", "Does anybody object?" "No" "Kiss the woman then!", blah blah blah... my eyes were not just on the bridesmaids, but looking at the walls and wondering what kind of wedding we had, almost literally stumbled into.
As I had not listened previously I had no idea (like most men when it comes to weddings I'd rather talk about tomato ketchup) what we were in for over the next few hours.
It was a medieval themed wedding, brilliant! Maybe I should have listened! We were in the grounds of Camelot theme park in the Best Western Park Hall Hotel .
After the ceremony, we watched the kids play for an hour and then went back in the room for our five-course medieval banquet.
It was soup to start with, which we had to eat/drink straight from the bowl with no spoons. One had to use the bread to scoop the vegetables out of the bottom, or somehow pour them in your gullet. All modern day etiquette straight out the window, I couldn't have been happier.
Next up was cold meats on rocket, wild boar ribs and then the main, which was a whole chicken each (a little baby chicken, that's wrong isn't it?) corn-on-the-cob and a jacket potato. In between our courses we were entertained by jesters fire eating, knights jousting and minstrels playing seventies records "from the future", all while King Arthur kept his eye on proceedings.
The highlight for me was when they got my partner up in the stocks. I volunteered her (!) without her knowing (mwahahaha!) and they dropped a guillotine on her head which failed to chop her head off. The knight and jester then got either side of her pretending they couldn't get her out of the stocks. As you can imagine this looked rather rude and after a few cups of wine and cider I was chuckling like a school kid.
Weddings are expensive, boring occasions generally but this was the best fun I'd had in ages. To give guests simple food without knives and forks as a novelty is pure genius and saves on washing up!
As we were having such fun we booked into the hotel and decided to have a few more drinks afterwards. Just to put us through the computer system took ages. Do they do criminal checks on every guest or something? The room was clean and soulless, pretty much as you'd expect, but by the time I'd done I could have slept on the dance floor.
I awoke and attempted a brew before breakfast but the kettle failed to work which wasn't good. We went down for breakfast and it was the buffet variety where you get your own out of tins. Why do they never get the bacon right?? Cook it until there's no fat on! The coffee was disgusting but other than that it was ok. It can't be easy to cook breakfast for 100 people.
The whole experience was made memorable by the entertainment and interesting food, and if I were to get married I would love to do something similar (should I have a say in the matter which I wouldn't!)
How can you as a B&B compete with that? How can you provide something different and memorable? An exciting, surprising experience that people will tell all their friends about.
