Planning your wedding day can seem daunting but with the right team around you and an all-star wedding coordinator, this mammoth task should be a breeze. This week we caught up with Debbie Catchlove the wedding coordinator at Oddfellows Chester. With 12 years in the industry, Debbie is a wealth of knowledge and definitely someone you’d want by your side while planning your special day.
See what she had to say about her experience and favourite parts of wedding planning…
The Planning Passion
“I am a natural organiser. I have always been the one who is asked to arrange parties, family reunions, etc, and felt the natural progression was to move into organising weddings and large events.”
The Highlights
“I enjoy having to build a rapport with the couple really quickly and I particularly enjoy guiding them through the whole planning process, all the way through to their wedding day.”
At Oddfellows Chester
“Oddfellows Chester is a really great product to sell, people absolutely fall in love with the venue as soon as they see it as it is really quirky, beautifully and brightly decorated and the function spaces are really different, not your normal run of the mill hotel function rooms. Our “upside down room” and “boxing hares” are big hits with everyone who sees them.
A Word of Advice
“I would tell them to make sure the wedding remains just about the two of them and what their dreams and visions are for their special day. There will be lots of people keen to offer their advice, and you can pick and choose which advice to take on board, but it is important to remain true to what they have envisaged for their big day.”
Favourite Memories
“After a year of being a Wedding Coordinator, I started to also run the weddings on the day, and run the function team, looking after the bride and grooms every need. I worked at a stunning hotel located in a valley, which had originally been a woollen mill, powered by the Falls of Clyde through a large water wheel. The buildings and beautiful backdrops for wedding photos stretched over quite a large area, where the bridal party would normally walk around to their various photo shoot locations. The very first bride that I looked after had Multiple Sclerosis, which meant that she could not stand for very long periods of time. Leading up to the wedding I had the idea to look into hiring a golf buggy for them and their photographer to get around the location. This worked an absolute treat, and we decorated it with balloons and sashes so that it looked really great, and the Bride and Groom were absolutely thrilled with us arranging that for them, and it meant that the Bride was very comfortable and they managed to get all of their photos done, which was great. I even managed to give myself the job of chauffeur, which was really good fun with the bride sitting next to me, and the groom hanging on to the back of the buggy for dear life!!”
Popular Trends
“Oddfellows has an affinity towards Alice in Wonderland themed weddings. When done properly, it can look absolutely beautiful with brightly coloured centrepieces incorporating teapots/teacups/flowers/giant playing cards.
Favourite & Least Favourite Trends
“I have particularly liked the vintage themed weddings, but only if they are done properly with really good taste and attention to all the details. I believe that if you are going to follow a theme it has to be all or nothing.”
Memorable Weddings
There was one wedding in Scotland, where the bride and groom were huge Star Wars fans, and so everything was done in that theme, all the centrepieces, stationery, everything. Because they were such huge fans they could only get married on one date, which was of course ……. “May the 4th”!!!
