Heidi and Wayne's Wedding

Maybe we were due a tough gig. We've played dozens of weddings and parties in Bristol and the South West over the last 3 years and, to be fair, all of them have gone really well. It was a credit to how far we've come as a band that after everything the evening threw at us we put on a good show. It's also worth saying that the wedding couple were lovely and the crowd were up for a good party - so it all looked good for a cracking night and it wasn't their fault there were problems.

The venue was Cameley lodge in Temple Cloud near Bristol and Heidi and Wayne had been told when they booked the venue that a 5 piece band would be fine. Which turned out to be not exactly true.

The venue itself was really nice: stunning views over fields and it's a 3 star restaurant so the food had been really good. We were relaxed when we got there and happy to soak up the peace and quiet overlooking a small lake while the speeches, which had overran, were finished.

It's a given with most weddings that the timings slip a bit during the day - it doesn't mean we're late but we normally have a bit of waiting around to do when we get there. When the main room was cleared it was an indication of the managements attitude that they asked us to move our gear from in front of a fire exit and wouldn't acknowledge that we'd questioned this and been told to set-up there by his staff.

The biggest frustration for us during the night was that we see ourselves as being there to provide entertainment for the couple, in this case Heidi and Wayne, on a very special day. Our job is to get people dancing and, basically, what the bride and groom want us to do during the night is what happens.

The venue were maybe a bit jaded with the whole wedding thing but they refused to move tables so people could dance and also had a noise limiter. I'm not going to go through how much pain this actually caused but I can say that repeatedly cutting the power to our equipment when we're playing and then saying that the noise limiter is off is not cool. We ended up wasting a lot of time because the management refused to talk to us about their concerns. As a last attempt to play any kind of gig I used some drumstick rods (which are normally used for acoustic MTV unplugged style gigs) to reduce the drumkit volume - which was enough to trip the limiter by itself and this seemed to work and we were able to get going. People got dancing and the venue's killjoy attitude had been defeated, have it!

The clash between our attitude of blending into the night and the managements apparent comfort with intruding and upsetting everyone was really at odds but we prevailed and played a fantastic, if very quiet, gig.