Compass Inn Weddings

Damn it! we just got into the swing of blogging every week and then we have one week without a wedding (although we did have Badminton Horse trials instead) and it all goes to pot. To fill you in on the last couple of weekends, we had a great wedding that used afternoon tea very effectively as light meal before a hog-roast for the evening party, this was a really interesting idea and worked well, funnily enough we have another “afternoon tea” wedding in a few weeks time so it looks like a new fashion emerging, there are a couple of pictures of the table set up with the afternoon tea on our Facebook page just search for “The Compass Inn” and browse our our picture galleries. Last weekend we had an engagement party on Saturday for a local girl and her fiancee which went very well and everyone seemed to have a great time. On Sunday we had a wedding which had chosen the unusual colour combination of cream and midnight blue, it was nice to see a departure from the classic pastel shades associated with summer weddings and it looked really smart. Sadly we don’t have any pictures but if we get sent any we will post them up.

The Compass Inn now Twitters to follow our tweeting go to http://twitter.com/compassinn for those of you that haven’t discovered the joys of twitter it is like a little mini blog that people update several times daily (Stephen Fry, Obama, No10 Downing St. and hundreds of other people twitter) our latest “Tweet” can be found in the top left corner of this page on our Twitter-feed. So despite our lack of blogging recently we have been twittering feverishly.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for our tweeting.

The last of the traffic jams have disappeared meaning that Badminton Horse Trials has packed up and finished for another year.   I did mention in the last blog  if anything else interesting happened over the weekend I would update, and it did.  Somebody on their way out of the event was too busy playing with their sat-nav and in a momentary laps of concentration ploughed their car in to the side of the building.  Luckily not too much dammage has been caused, just a couple of broken pipes and a very old, heavy saddle-stone which was unlucky enough to be in the path of the car was sheered in half prior to the car gouging a lump out of the kitchen wall. The good news is that nobody was injured during this short spell of off-road driving.

Well at least we can’t say Badminton weekend was dull!

As many of you know the first weekend in May is usualy Badminton Horse Trials, one of the largest outdoor sporting events in the world.  This event brings 400,000 people to the sleepy village of Badminton (with a normal population of only a few hundred) for 4 days, as you can imagine this makes us really quite busy throughout the whole hotel! It may be manically busy but we do get to see a great selection of people over these few days including riders, owners, trainers, interesting stall holders and plenty of other people.  For the last 3 days we have had a helicopter landing in the grounds of the hotel which has spawned plenty of rumours about us having a celebrity guest staying for the weekend, alas this is not the case we simply had some nice chaps staying who use it for their work, but never-the-less it has kept everyone talking.  The strange thing is we had a 2nd guest ask to land a helicopter on Thursday night which would have meant for the first time ever we would have had 2 here at the same time, sadly they had to cancel due to the strong winds we have been experiencing over the last few days.   

We may well blog again next week if we get any exciting news from the weekend.

Just a quick update whilst we are preparing for today’s wedding, getting the hog roast set up and the pig cooking (they seem to take forever but they always smell fab) whilst sorting out all the little fiddly bits like flowers and favours.  It’s these little details that make every wedding individual to the couple involved, and although they may seem unimportant it would be very dull if we all liked the same things.

Last weekend we had the wedding of Jodie & Clive Godfrey who had chosen Periwinkle blue as the colour for the bridesmaids along with spring flowers in pastle shades, this was a lovely combination and many people commented on how refreshing it was as a theme proving that Sometimes keeping it simple and in touch with the season is the best policy.  Congratulations to Jodie and Clive and all the best for the future from everyone here at the Compass Inn.

Well the weekend has come and gone, and once again I have failed miserably to blog any earlier in the week than usual, despite my promise to be better organised.  This weekend was the London Marathon and time for Dave dela Pena to strut his stuff and show that all the grueling training had paid off.  We had signed up for updates from Adidas who were tracking every runner,  meaning we could see the statistics and times as Dave made his way along the 26.2  mile course.  At the 1/2 way point Dave was “looking bright and cheery, and he was smiling”  how anyone can run 13 miles and still look bright and cheery is beyond me, but he had reached this point in 2h 13mins and went on to finish with a fantastic time of 4h 31mins. A huge personal achievement for Dave made even sweeter by the £2500+ sponsorship money raised for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

So from all of us at The Compass Inn, well done dela !

It’s been a while since we last blogged and there are lots of little bits we should have already written about.  The beautiful Bamfield wedding was held here a couple of weeks ago (there are already a few pictures on our Facebook page) the weather held out for the happy couple and they managed to have their photographs taken outside in the gardens (which are already looking fab considering its only April).  One of our brides from a while back recently held her 30th birthday here in the rather nice style of a “Black & Red Ball” and we had the very stylish 50th birthday party of a local lady who’s son James works here at The Compass.  So a busy couple of weeks in all!

If we blogged more regularly we wouldn’t have to play catch up like this, so maybe early next week we’ll try and blog again with news of the weekend.

Last but certainly not least our marathon runner is all set and ready for the London Marathon on Sunday, he has been carb-loading for a while so he should be fueled up and raring to go. Good luck for Sunday Dave we all have faith in you and we know you can do it! (if you would like to sponsor dave go to justgiving.com/rundelarun)

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend and that the Easter bunny left you lots of chocolate goodies.  We gave displays of chocolate eggs and sweets to everyone who stayed on Saturday evening (we didn’t think people would want chocolate for breakfast on Sunday morning), they went down very well and we had loads of people saying what a nice surprise it was.  As promised in our last blog I have posted a picture of our handy work and well done to Tom one of our junior chefs for showing a bit of creative flair.

Easter eggs

For the first time in several years we do not have a wedding this Easter weekend which is kind of a shame but also it’s a bit of a rest for everyone, last Easter weekend was the wedding of  Adam and Charlotte Stacey which was particularly nice for us to do especially as the grooms brother had been married here only a few years before.  My sister Charlotte Monyard became Charlotte de la Pena on Easter weekend 4 years ago at a beautiful wedding ceremony held in Bath followed by a function back here at The Compass that was so memorable it was published in Cosmopolitan Bride.  We have plans to give each room an Easter egg this Saturday evening ready for Easter Sunday, so later on today the chefs will be looking at fancy ways to display them and send them to the bedrooms, if I manage to get any photos of these chocolate delights I will put them up when I blog in a few days.  

For a long time now (30 years +) it has been tradition for the family here at the Compass Inn to buy the staff hot cross bun good Friday and today will be no different, so I must say goodbye now and go shopping for Easter goodies and hot cross buns.

Have fun on this nice long Easter weekend and try not to eat too many chocolate bunnies.

We are all having fun learning about coffee with our new coffee machine, it allows us to make delicious hand crafted coffee, you know the fancy types like lattes, cappuccinos and espresso this may not seem particularly exciting to some but as we found out recently coffee is a very complicated science and believe me we have already noticed a huge difference in the quality and so have many of our customers.  Just so the tea drinkers among you don’t feel left out we have also invested in a new tea service and are currently looking at changing to a superior quality fair trade tea.  As our coffee is now organic, fair trade and rain forest alliance certified this means you can now enjoy your favourite coffee with a clear conscience.   

We also have a new late breakfast menu so hopefully I can be gainfully employed as a waffle tester next, Yum!

After lots of worry that Friday nights charity quiz would be too difficult or too easy and the possibility that not many people would attend, we were delighted when 18 teams took part.  The winners with over 70 points were the “Bamber Gascoine’s” and the “Wooden tops” took home the wooden spoon with around 40 points, but most importantly was the taking part of so many people for such a good cause.  We also ran a raffle with some great prizes kindly donated by The Sodbury Florist, Dando’s Fiat dealership, Elliott McDougall (Renault race centre),  Butcombe brewery www.butcombe.com and www.rockstv.com which helped us raise a total of £533.70 from the whole evening, so thank you and well done to everyone who donated and supported the evening.  To follow Dave’s fundrasing progress visit www.justgiving.com/rundelarun. 

Mother’s day was really busy with plenty of  fantastic feedback from happy customers who really enjoyed the good food in a great atmosphere and many people were pleasantly surprised by the pollyanthus plants we were giving each mum to take home with them.  It was nice to see so many people appreciating their mums for all the hard work they do through the year.