If you are looking for a wedding venue, you can stop looking. This is the right place. We rented the castle and some cottages for a week for our wedding, and it could not have been better! It was literally the perfect week.
We first booked the castle, sight unseen, in 2018 for our wedding April 18, 2020. Then three weeks beforehand, the borders closed and everything went into lockdown. I read so many horror stories of people who lost all their deposits, but Belle Isle was so accommodating and understanding about everything. We ended up having to postpone twice before we settled on our final date: April 28, 2022. But when we got to the estate, even though no one wants to postpone their wedding mere weeks before it takes place, it was all worth the hassle and the wait.
I don't have enough superlatives to commend the staff here. Cherry, who was our point person and day-of wedding coordinator, is just the best. I can't recommend her enough. She made everything run smoothly for us, and given that we had to plan everything from the United States, that assistance was invaluable. She's so sweet and thoughtful and makes everything much more manageable. I really don't know what we would have done without her. I didn't get to spend as much time working with Emma, but the time I did get to meet her, she was also incredibly sweet and thoughtful - in fact, she made a reel for Instagram and shared it with me since I was too busy on the day to look myself.
The site itself is absolutely gorgeous. The photos online really don't do it justice. I'm not sure there is a good way for photos to capture the elegance of the rooms or the natural beauty of the estate. In fact, we are going to be in the UK for another wedding next summer, and my husband and I are planning to come back to Belle Isle afterward for at least a few days because we loved the island and the people so much.
Because I live in Los Angeles and my and my husband's families live in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Oregon, the UK, and Washington DC, it was going to be a destination wedding for most of the guests no matter what we did. And honestly, at Belle Isle Estate, the value you get for the price you pay is extraordinary. My guests didn't have to pay much more to attend than they'd have had to for coming to a Southern California wedding, and most of the increased amount was in airfare, not accommodations. As for the cost for us, the bride and groom, the venue fee was less than a typical venue in SoCal, and because all the vendors were less expensive as well, we ended up spending significantly less than the average cost of a wedding here in the States.
All-in-all, it was the best week of my life, and much of that is thanks to the lovely people, rooms, and landscape at Belle Isle.