Last month I wrote about house-hunting being one of the recurring reasons bringing our guests to Eymet. Another reason, which I hadn’t considered at all before we opened the B&B, is to attend a wedding celebration in one of the nearby châteaux / manor houses.
We are lucky to have several excellent venues close by and they are very popular, particularly with British and Irish couples celebrating their wedding in France. Our beautiful Bastide town of Eymet with the bars and restaurants, the B&B and gite options, 3 airports in easy reach, is a great choice as a ‘hub’ for such an occasion.
In fact, my son and his fiancée who live in London are doing exactly that in August at Le Manoir du Bout du Pont at La Sauvetat de Dropt. They have been here this month to finalise their choices for catering, wine, arrangements at the venue, the supply of all the ‘stuff’ they are going to need and to start their detailed planning. We tasted wines with Manu at the lovely and recently refurbished Cave in Eymet and with Christophe at Domaine de Sauban whose wines I really like, to name a couple, but we are so spoilt for choice! We also sampled Rosie’s food from Party In France at Goujounac which was excellent.
For many weekends from late May to Early September, we have wedding guests arriving on the Thursday or Friday and leaving on the Sunday or Monday. There is often a gathering for food and drinks in Eymet ahead of the big day and usually a pool party / BBQ back at the wedding venue the day after.
Sometimes the wedding party will stay with us for a couple of nights before they move to the venue for the weekend. Some guests have stayed for a week or even longer making a proper holiday out of it with the wedding included. For the guests of local French weddings, it is fair to say that we hardly see them for the whole of their stay given the duration of the parties for those occasions.
I like it when we have a houseful of guests all attending the same wedding. The party atmosphere spills into our house, garden and pool, but we’ve also had guests from three separate weddings staying on the same weekend comparing notes about their respective venues.
I realise the large number of wedding celebrations here over the last couple of seasons was fuelled by a post COVID backlog, but I hope it continues moving forward because they are such good weekends for all involved.
We made good progress on the ‘to do’ list during April as well as welcoming B&B guests throughout the month, including several returning customers who have enjoyed staying with us before which makes me so happy 😊. As we move into May the B&B is getting busier, our pool is open (although given the weather this April it still has some warming up to do!) and we are seeing more tourists in the village and surrounding area. Bring on our 3rd summer season here!
