What a shower!

It has been a really active week at the craft centre, firstly the sculpture trail launch and then yesterday an evening wedding party.  I heard it said that this was our first "American Bride" and later, when the party were in the garden before dinner, I found out that this was the "English bit" of their nuptials. The Bride and Groom had married in America last week in a garden ceremony with blazing sunshine.  Yesterday they had their second celebration in real English style - everyone was in their finest regalia (they all looked great, especially the Bride) - dodging the raindrops.  In fact during the evening we probably had more rainfall in the garden than we have in the entire month, including some thunder and lightening.    The weather did not appear to worry anyone - they ate dinner and partied in really good spirits, while we ducks danced in the rain - gosh we did enjoy it!

Dodging raindrops - Nick and Lindsey with family

We have the courtyard marquee at the centre until after the bank holiday and I understand that there is a wedding and special event display on show until it goes, so people can see what goes on here, or what could go on here!

The courtyard marquee display

A bit of sad news today - the mother of the ducklings on the pond is now down to two left on the water (four are still being brought up by the humans), one of the ducklings just disappeared (the crows we think) and the other just keeled over, although we have a suspicion he may have got under someone's foot as he had been getting far to close to people!

Special visitors

We knew that there was something going on when we were woken up on Thursday morning with the clanging of pipes -- the courtyard marquee was going up, so we suspected a wedding for the weekend.  Lots of comings and goings later, the wedding party arrived on Saturday, just after a heavy down pour of rain that had everyone worried.  Fortunately, the sky cleared just as the Bride and Groom arrived and everyone was able to enjoy there welcome drink in the gardens while they took photographs.  The guests were all meandering back into the marquee for speeches when the second down pour arrived and we thought that we had seen the last of them, but it did cheer up again later and we had a lovely surprise when the Bride and Groom came and fed us -- you would have thought that they would have had too much to do to worry about us,  we were thrilled !

Matt and Rebekah made time for us on their special day, we think they will be very happy!

A quiet moment - Father of the Bride and Page

There were some cheeky pages at this wedding - we did have to keep our eyes on them!

The day after the wedding was atrocious, weather-wise - even for us ducks, however the restaurant looked pretty busy serving Sunday lunch -- probably comfort food!  We did not get of this and bread was scare -- it was just too wet.  There was a Wedding Fayre in the marquee all day Sunday and some very brave couples came along to see the 4 local wedding venues that were here.  We heard that it was a good show and lots of interested parties came -- despite the rain.  

Monday we had a dry day and lots of visitors - many with foreign accents. It turned out to be a "Twinning Visit" between Ross-on-Wye and Betzdorf, Germany.  They had a great visit to Avoncroft Museum in the morning and came to us for lunch and the afternoon. We got a good look at everyone, as spent a long time in the garden with the Falconry birds and were very complimentary about it -- can't see what all the fuss is about, the birds of prey are interesting but they don't chat like we do!

Just as we thought it was all over -- another group of special visitors arrived on Tuesday - The Redditch and Bromsgrove Carers Support Group had an open day with us and invited many of the hard working carers in the area, some lovely people and we were really pleased to see them and they seemed to have a good day out.

The Carers Carline used the Courtyard Marquee for their stands.

Now can I get some sleep?   Oh no...... it would appear not , the Beer Tent has just gone up for the annual beer festival which starts Friday!