A Letter from Ans
As we reach the half-way point of what we hope is the last of national lockdowns, once again we find our days rolling into weeks and welcome back the return of the banana bread bake off, home schooling, Tiktock remake weekends and The Walk !
We hope your Christmas was peaceful though and that you all managed to get a lovely break.
We know the beginning of the year also means the kickstart of wedding planning, and perhaps many of you going back to planning after a break. We understand that this isn’t easy in current circumstances, so we’ve put together a covid wedding planning timeline full of tips to help you.
Meanwhile we are remaining hopeful and remembering to enjoy the magic in the small things and be grateful for all that we have; health, your support, an amazing team…
We know there are brighter days to come and for now we wanted to keep you up to date with where we’re at with things. Early this week Anselm wrote to everyone getting married this year up until the end of November, we wanted to share this with you, along with some other tasty delights!
Anselm's update
I am aware that you must be concerned. The news is not looking good with this new variant and its impact on the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths and I think the media are doing an excellent job of fanning that concern across the country.
Taking a deep breath, however, when you look at the figures the number of hospitalisations (and deaths) as a proportion of the number of people reported positive is really quite low. And there’s no evidence of the virus being more of a risk to younger people that it was before.
Things are looking brighter
The amazing news is that we do have the vaccines being rolled out. Surely, they will make a difference? One can only hope it will be a major difference. But we need a little more than hope don’t we!?
Hope is what our PM has been sitting on to steer us through this. I find it deeply frustrating we are in this mess and when you look at a country like Japan (island nation, similar population density, major hub with big cities) and notice they have had marginally more than 3,500 deaths out of their 125 million population (against our 80,000+ from 65 million) it’s hard not to think certain things…
I am however an optimist as well as a realist, and I do think things will get better fairly soon and might quite suddenly.
We have an amazing local MP for Stroud, Siobhan Baillie who has been really supportive to us as an industry. Check out her recent post on instagram and make a comment as I'm sure she'd love to hear your thoughts and that would feed into the work she is doing on our behalf.
A story from the Glade
I’ve been in awful circumstances before when you feel like it can’t get worse. In events probably my worst time was when we had the heaviest rain pretty much ever recorded in the UK at the Glade Festival 2007. I was one of the directors and it was so bad we didn’t think we could get through it and keep the 20,000 people on site safe. We couldn’t evacuate however as the roads were all badly flooded, so we needed to dig deep and make it work. There was a river running through a big top threatening to bring the whole thing down, people’s tents being washed away and acts not easily being able to get to site because the roads were so flooded (See Dreadzone making their way in there!).
But it came good. I look back on it with fondness; the team spirit was astonishing and the joy when the sun came out just exceptional.
And the sun will shine on us all again.
Covid wedding planning
Going forward I’m not changing our approach and will continue to offer free postponements from the ‘3 month before’ point and will continue to offer an alternative micro-wedding deal as well at this point. I hope you are aware of that mechanism?! The FAQs on our website has lots more about that should you need. I’ll keep this in place as long as necessary.
Of course, the impact on the business has been severe and you may be worried about whether we can survive it. The truth is we can. I can. It’s not turning out to be cheap though and every loss is hitting my pocket… I run the business as a sole trader and as such can’t just fold a limited company. So, you are safe. But I am hoping that I don’t need to sell off chunks of the estate when this is all done. Especially as we have wonderful plans to build treehouses and rewild the land. It’s not doing wonders for my sleep !
But I strongly believe the party is not over. We humans needs celebration and joy and to gather. It’s a basic human instinct and right and we shall again soon.
And we know we are able to make things really fun even with restrictions. We understood that when we did our Parrot Cage Events. And most of all we know, from the wonderful micro-weddings we’ve hosted, that love conquers all.
Team E
Working a few hours here and there as part of flexi-furlough, the team are still available by email and phone to ensure their couples are looked after and support Anselm where needed. We can’t wait for when things get a little busier and be back together. We are also excited about rebuilding the team with some new recruits as well as looking into how we do things and improve operationally. We couldn’t do it without one another and no we will get out the other side stronger as a team than ever before.
New food & tastings
And on that note of busier times. One thing we are really very excited for you all to enjoy this year are our delicious new food menus. Created by our talented head chef Matt, our new menu got chance to take centre stage at the end of last year and have it’s very own photoshoot.
(There are some pics below to get your taste buds flowing by Gary Nunn Photographer.)
And we know that for some, a food tasting is something that still needs arranging.
We want to let you know this is something we are looking really hard into how best to organise with all the curve balls still being spun our way. As soon as we know when we can fire up those ovens and invite you in again, we will be in touch directly with the options.
As ever, if you need us we are here at the end of the phone or email.
And we're sending lots of love!
Anselm & Team E
xx
