The operations director of a Chichester wedding venue on how people tell their story and being 'Queen of the spreadsheet' | Vicky Meets

What is the Upwaltham back story? Family is the heart of everything we do here. My grandparents bought the farm, which is set in the beautiful surroundings of the South Downs National Park, in 1987. They ran it while developing the farm house.

​In 2000 my parents moved here and built our house, then they renovated the barns and we started to use them for weddings. There are now a total of nine members of the family working here. All our flowers for summer weddings come from our cutting garden, grown by my grandpa, and my Nanny is out there every week looking after the gardens.

Have you seen just about every kind of wedding imaginable? Yes, absolutely. People put a lot of effort into telling their story, right down to the smallest details. We have had Harry Potter weddings, literary weddings, steam punk weddings, amazing décor installations, fantastic singers – they are all wonderful and different. But the biggest thing we advise our couples is to put a bit of ‘you’ into your wedding and make it really personal.

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What does your role entail? Mum and Dad are the personality and it’s their taste and style that has built what we have today. They are here for almost all weddings and they love that. After Covid mum wanted to step back from admin. I’m Queen of the spreadsheet and I love a list, so I run the organisational side of things – the wedmin! A wedding day is so important. We have to make sure that we give couples the most special day possible.

Seeing it all happen on the day is the best bit of the job and we always want every couple to feel like they are our priority from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave. All our couples become part of the Upwaltham family. At Christmas my mum hand makes little heart Christmas tree decorations and sends them to every one of our brides. Couples come back to show their children where they got married, or they come for an anniversary walk and to tell us where they are with their lives, which is lovely.

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Did you have your own wedding here? Of course! I never even considered anywhere else. We got married in 2019, on one of the hottest days of the year. We also had a blessing in the tiny village church because my Mum and Dad got married there. After dinner we surprised everyone by walking them down the valley to a hidden tepee where we had the party.

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What is the single most important piece of advice you would give a couple? Find two minutes during the day to step away from your guests, but to somewhere you can still see them. Then drink in the fact that all these people are here to celebrate you. The day goes so fast and to take that moment is something really special.

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Where can we find further information? upwalthambarns-weddings.co.uk; Instagram: @upwalthambarns

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