Wedding Breakfast Club x Brunchfest - A super fun retreat!

This is one for the wedding industry folk! (but couples please feel free to read through and see what fun 24 wedding suppliers get up out of season!)

Back in February I headed to Somerset for the first retreat hosted by the London Wedding Breakfast Club cleverly titled “Brunchfest” but boy was there more than brunch! The idea of the retreat was that everyone could take a much needed chill out after a super busy wedding season and have 4 days to just unwind, relax, share and have fun.

I loved that there was no set agendas or strict timetables to adhere too and you really could do as much or as little as you wanted. In fact the only things we had set times for were the styled shoot, murder mystery party and the Wednesday afternoon surprise. Aside from that everyone posted in the Facebook group what they were doing so anyone else that wanted to join in could! This included SEO talks in the library, walks around the beautiful grounds and supermarket runs!

To give you a little breakdown of this year a lot of us met up a few weeks before for a drink and to meet those we hadn’t met before as well as get out murder mystery characters, there is also a Facebook group to chat and get to know each other before hand and we were all aware who out roomie was so we could get to know each other. We all arrived on Monday afternoon and were shown to our rooms where we had a little welcome pack awaiting us! We then all explored the house a little before making our own pizzas and having a few drinks and chatting into the evening!

Tuesday: Styled shoot day - I had volunteered myself to be a bridesmaid (ha!) this also came with a stupidly early wake up time so Ann-Marie could do my make up but it did mean I got first dibs on hot water and breakfast ha! Throughout the day there were different set ups and we had external models to photograph too. There were also mini breakout sessions within this time too. After the styled shoot we all got ready for the murder mystery party (which I may be a little biased as I organised it) was my favourite thing! Everyone made SO much effort with their outfits and getting into character! We had a beautiful meal cooked for us by Sainlo events (who catered the whole week!) With the rest of the evening playing out our roles and trying to solve the ‘murder’ (also fulled on by lots of alcohol and an adhoc sing along in the basement!)

Wednesday: Was SUPER chilled, I expect as a lot of people were nursing hangovers (smug face as I didn’t drink too much!) again, everyone did what they wanted, I think their were runs and walks as well as layins. Lex & I got to work preppin’ the surprise which was a 90’s themed kids party complete with slush puppies (and rum) and a candy floss machine, pass the parcel, musical chairs and pin the tail on the donkey! After the sugar rush everyone broke off into smaller groups to chat, look at websites, talk seo, shoot some headshots or sleep! In the evening some of us stayed in and had various takeaways and others all went off to the pub.

Thursday: Epic tidy up and goodbyes! (I didn’t want to go home!)

I think taking on board feedback from this year the plan is to scrap a ‘big’ styled shoot and encourage smaller collaborations for those that want to, get a big white board to put in the entrance hall so everyone can see where/what is going on and there’s been talks of a hot tub!!

It’s super hard to put into words how much fun it was so I will let the photos do the talking!