Honey and Harvest 2018

On September 18th we celebrated our 4th Honey and Harvest event at Deans Court by welcoming a group of inspirational and creative people to spend the day with us. To celebrate our new wedding license, this year’s event was very much wedding themed and we showcased our venue while treating our guests to a myriad of workshops, tastings and talks by local creative suppliers.

After a tour of our organic, permaculture kitchen garden, where our gardener Linda explained the benefits of our ‘no-dig’ system, the day kicked off with a wonderfully inspirational calligraphy workshop from Gemma Milly Calligraphy. Gemma creates the most exquisite wedding stationery, her designs for ‘save the dates’, invites and place cards are unique and beautiful and she also hosts calligraphy workshops from our cafe. For Honey and Harvest Gemma had created every guest a personalised calligraphy set and following her guide, we were taught how to write flowing place names.

Lunch is always one of the highlights of the day and for this year’s event we hosted pre-lunch canapés and cocktails at the front of the house, feasting on Flaming Peaches canapés and pear vodka cocktails.

We make the pear infused vodka ourselves, attaching recycled glass bottles to pear shoots on our tree and allowing the fruit to grow inside the bottle. Flaming Peaches provide sharing style street food and canapés at many of our weddings, their food is indulgent, creative and simply delicious and in testament to that we can reveal every canapé was polished off!

Back again for their 4th year, The Linen Works styled our lunch table using their new aubergine collection. The company’s founder Larissa spoke about the uniqueness of their organic linens and demonstrated different ways in which to display napkins, whether at home or when styling a wedding.

We topped the beautiful linen with a vegetarian feast of homemade seasonal salads, quiches and tarts made with the produce growing in our garden. This was accompanied by courgette bread, homemade chutneys and our home-pressed apple juice.

For pudding we were treated to the most beautiful raw, vegan wedding cake by Elspeth’s Kitchen. Elspeth’s Kitchen are based in Bristol and are the largest supplier of vegan cakes in the country, their designs are beautiful to look at and utterly delicious to eat. For Honey and Harvest Elspeth had created a two tiered cake inspired by our garden. The first layer was chocolate, pistachio and rose with whole pistachios lining the base so that beautiful specs of bright green contrasted with the deep brown chocolate, while the second tier was spiced chia; a lovely warming flavour for the change of seasons. Elspeth decorated the cake with fresh sage, rosemary, lavender and myrtle from our garden and talked to us about her inspiration, the process involved in creating raw, vegan cakes and how vegan wedding cakes are surging in popularity.

Emma from Martha and The Meadow is a Honey and Harvest alumni, she joined us as our guest in our second year and we were delighted when she agreed to come back this year to host a flower crown workshop. She is a regular at Deans Court, having been the florist of choice for many of our couples this summer. Her designs are natural, beautiful and unique to every couple she works with. For Honey and Harvest she had foraged and styled the most wonderful dried flower display which we were encouraged to take from and create our own flower crowns.

As always, the day concluded in our cafe, with tea, coffee and more cake for anyone that could fit it in. We stopped off at The Gate House on our way to show our guests our largest holiday property where many of our wedding parties choose to stay before wishing them well on their way laden with their creations from the day and personalised goodie bags.

We had the most wonderful day and are extremely grateful to everyone who came or contributed in anyway and helped make Honey and Harvest so much fun. With our wedding license now fully approved we’re looking forward to another, even busier season in 2019 and to celebrate our license we’re offering to pay the registrar’s fee for any couple that gets legally married at Deans Court in 2019. If you’d like to arrange a venue tour or have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Please email our events manager Jonathan on jonathan@deanscourt.org.