‘Catalogue of errors at venue ruined our £20,000 wedding’
A COUPLE who spent more than £20,000 on a lavish wedding say their big day was ruined by a string of errors at the venue where they’d chosen to tie the knot.
Simon and Chloe Ross had chosen to get married at the Georgian-built Maes Manor Hotel in Blackwood on Thursday, August 29.
It described itself as the “perfect venue” with a “friendly professional team on hand to ensure that everything runs smoothly”.
But what should have been a moment to remember turned out to be one they would rather forget as the music kept cutting out as the bride walked down the aisle, forcing her and the bridal party to repeatedly start again, and the DJ announced the wrong couple’s name before the first dance.
Gift donations of £260 are also alleged to have gone missing after the postbox in which they had been left was placed in an area with no working CCTV.
“It was a total disaster, the wedding from hell,” says Simon, a customer services adviser from Tonteg, near Pontypridd.
“To watch Chloe have to repeatedly restart her walk down the aisle was awful – and all because someone thought it was a good idea to play the track we’d chosen via YouTube, the WiFi connection for which kept buffering.
“The fact I was also left standing there up front like a lemon didn’t help either. I was cringing inside. Then, come the first dance, the DJ called us Mr and Mrs Moss instead of Ross.”
Simon says it wasn’t the DJ’s fault because that was the info he’d been handed by the hotel staff.
“Had we not spent so much money on the ceremony then I’d probably look back and laugh about it all,” he said. “But there’s nothing even vaguely funny about the fact some of our wedding money later went walkabout.”
The 32-year-old said the locked postbox they’d hired so that guests could drop in cards containing cash had been placed in a part of the hotel where the CCTV camera was out of action.
“After a quick ring-around the next morning we worked out that a number of cards had gone missing, amounting to £260 in gift money,” says Simon.
“But when I brought it up I was told that I’d previously signed a form which said the hotel wasn’t liable for the loss of any personal items occurring on the property.
“However, when I asked to provide that paperwork, they couldn’t prove I’d signed any such thing.”
He also claims that when he said he’d be posting a damning online review about the experience he was told in an email that that any “inaccurate criticism” on social media would be met with legal action.
He says they also accused him of turning up at the hotel to “harass staff members”, with any further visits being threatened with a call to the police.
Maes Manor’s manager Michael Yarnold – who was not the manager at the time of the wedding – has apologised for the tone of the email and added that an apology had since been issued to Simon and Chloe.
“That was dealt with in the wrong way and I’ve spoken to the directors about that,” said Mr Yarnold.
“The directors shouldn’t have been left to sort this issue out and had there been any management in place here at the time it wouldn’t have come to that.” He explained that the previous manager and assistant manager had left Maes Manor not long after the Ross wedding, adding that he’d only officially started in the role on September 9.
“Nevertheless, I am aware of the couple’s situation and really feel for them,” he said.
“Had I been in charge I would have done things differently.
“With regards to the money – we’ve never had an issue like that before and I’ve put procedures in place to prevent this ever happening again.
“While I can’t just open a till and offer them back the missing cash I would like to offer the couple an evening’s stay here, along with dinner and breakfast as compensation, the total cost of which would come to more than the amount they say was lost.
“I’m distraught about what happened and if there’s anything Maes Manor can do in hospitality terms to put this right I’m more than happy to do that.”