Welcome To Brenscombe

Welcome to Roka Bella Rose Weddings at Brenscombe

At Roka Bella Rose Weddings we understand that not only do you want to find the perfect venue for your wedding, but you want the freedom to be able to have your wedding the way you want it to be. It is our wish to give you the freedom to do this. With the venue and services Roka Bella Rose Weddings can provide aside, we won’t stipulate which suppliers you have to use. However we can arrange a number of excellent suppliers who we have worked with and trust that are highly recommended in the industry.

We are lucky to have a very versatile venue, which gives you a lot of options to play with.

Brenscombe is an exclusive use Festival/ Marquee/ Barn/ Courtyard/ Woodland Wedding Venue nestled amongst the Purbeck Hills between Corfe Castle and Studland, with far reaching countryside views, and distant sea views of Poole Harbour. We also have a Tipi Village and plentiful accommodation.

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Woodland

Our private woodland is a little bit special as our Woodland Celebrant Ceremony area is in a natural woodland basin. It feels just a little bit enchanted up there. 

Marquees

Brenscombe has a big field which can be used for marquees. We can supply a 12m x 12m Traditional Canvas marquee that can be used (subject to availability) for a minimal fee, but you are free to hire in your own. Our venue price stays the same no matter how grand, or how intimate you wish for your wedding to be as you’re paying to have exclusive use of it for the weekend (Friday night to Sunday morning).

At the top of our field is a campfire area which can be used when the temperatures drop. From here you’ll be able to see distant lights of Poole harbour as you toast your marshmallows or play a little guitar. Let us know if you need us to order you any logs, or if you’d like us to put together a campfire package for you.

Accommodation

At the bottom of our field is our Tipi Village. Six giant Tipis with log burners inside. There is also space here for Bell Tents for that beautiful Glamping Wedfest feel.

Should your guests wish to use their own tents there is a limited amount of space in the orchard behind our farmhouse accommodation.

This leads me onto our other onsite accommodation. Brenscombe is better known as an outdoor activity centre, many schools use it for school activity trips, and companies use it for corporate events. We therefore have a lot of accommodation available in the form of heated dormitory rooms with all bedding provided. Dorm rooms may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but because we have so many available you can choose to spread your guests out how you like. Couples and families can have their own room or you could put all your family members in the two farmhouses. You could group together your single friends who like to party and your couple friends who like to party close to each other, and put other guests in a different building. It’s completely up to you how you work it. We can sit down together and make a sleeping plan and provide guests with the information they need for where to lay their heads.

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There are toilets/ toilets and showers in some of the accommodation buildings, and there are also ample separate male and female toilets and showers in a courtyard close to the wedding barns and courtyards.

Also due to the fantastic location of our venue we have a vast amount of hotels, B&Bs and campsites nearby. These would need booking in advance as it’s a very popular area.

If you’re local and have guests coming from Swanage or Wareham, then we have mini buses available and can provide a shuttle service which may work out cheaper than individual taxis.

Wareham is our most easily accessible train station with trains from London Waterloo, and Bournemouth is our closest airport.

Accommodation Pricing

Your guests can book and pay for their accommodation directly through us if you wish, so that we can take all of the stress out of it for you.

• Tipi Village Accomodation is comprised of 6 giant Tipis equipped with log burners. One of which we will set up as a Wedding Night Tipi for you.

Each Tipi will comfortably sleep 10 adults if using roll mats and sleeping bags.

It is £35 per person if providing your own bedding/ beds. There is a minimum of 5 people per Tipi. If there are less than 5 people sleeping in a Tipi the price of the Tipi is £175 for 3 or 4 people, or £150 for 1 person or 2 people.

There are add on options for each of the Tipis. These are as follows:

• Camp beds provided £15 per person extra

• Bedding provided £10 per person extra

• Decorating the Tipi with lights, rugs, 2 seats and decor £50 per Tipi.

• Toiletries & Treats Hamper for two £75

• 2x Bamboo Toothbrushes

• 2x Natural Sponges

• 1x Organic Shower Gel

• 1x Organic Face Wash

• 1x Natural Toothpaste

• Local award winning Bubbly

• Local Chocolates

• Personalised message board

• Dormitory accommodation in the barns £37.50pp

Top Barn

46 beds across 9 bedrooms

Long Barn

42 beds across 11 bedrooms

Upper Barn/ Hayloft

11 beds across 4 bedrooms

Lower Barn

15 beds across 3 bedrooms

• Dormitory accommodation in the Farmhouses £37.50pp

Farmhouse

21 beds across 5 bedrooms

Dairyhouse

26 beds across 4 bedrooms

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Combined there is accommodation for 161 people across the farmhouses and barns. A full floorplan can be emailed on request

• Camping in your own tent (speak to us regarding numbers) £17.50pp. This can be in the orchard if you want to keep the field aesthetically pleasing for photos.

• If hiring in additional Tipis/ Bell Tents to increase the size of the village it is £17.50pp the same as camping in your own tent.

A cooked breakfast is included in the price of all accommodation. So much easier than coordinating everyone bringing items to cook for breakfast and all trying to cook...then wash up, all whilst nursing a hangover. We’ve all been to a festival/ onsite accommodation wedding.....or more than one wedding, where everyone has gone home with a loaf of bread as a goodie bag. So let’s just keep things simple.

Bar

There are three options for you to choose from.

Option One 

• We can supply a fully stocked & staffed bar for you with disposable cups. If you wish to have glassware you will need to hire this in separately or ask your catering company to provide it.

• Either yourselves, our bar, or your catering company will be able to provide table wine and bubbly for toasting. If you're providing this yourselves then it is limited to 1 bottle of wine for every 2 people, and for toasting it is 1 bottle of bubbly for every 5 people, corkage free.

Option Two

• You can book your own bar company (an additional £300 fully refundable deposit will be required)

• We will need to see their license and insurance documents prior to your big day.

• They/ you will need to provide all glassware.

• They/ you will be required to take any glass bottles, rubbish, and glassware etc away or you will forfeit your deposit.

• It is at the discretion of your bar company how much table wine and bubbly for toasting they allow.

Option Three

• You may provide your own alcohol, with no corkage fee, as a free bar for your guests (as above a fully refundable additional £300 deposit will be required)

• Under no circumstances can you charge for alcohol supplied by yourselves. If you do require guests to contribute to the cost of purchasing alcohol this must be done prior to your big day, and no money can exchange hands on our site.

• You will need to provide all glassware. Some hire companies allow you to return glassware dirty, and some will require you to clean it. There is an outside tap available for you to be able to use, but you will need to bring with you what you will require for cleaning.

• You will be required to take any glass bottles, rubbish, and glassware etc away with you or you will forfeit your deposit.

• Should you require staff to serve your free drinks for you this can be arranged for an additional fee.

• We can even point you in the direction of some of our fantastic local Breweries, Distilleries and Vineyards who you’ll be able to purchase alcohol from should you wish to do so.

Horsebox style bars can set up in the courtyard or in the marquee field. We also have a selection of different bars that can be hired to serve drinks from. The finer details of bar placement can be discussed once we have an idea of how you see your special day.

Catering

This is a big thing when it comes to weddings, and what type of food, and when and how it is served are very personal choices, and each wedding will be completely different. Therefore we want you to have freedom of choice.

We can of course point you in the direction of companies that we know and trust should you wish for us to. These companies are used to working with us and we fully trust that they will take everything away with them that they bring to site, and will leave it in the same condition as when they arrive. We therefore don’t require any additional deposit for using companies we know.

If you wish to choose caterers that we haven’t worked with before, then we will require an additional £300 fully refundable deposit. They must also provide all the correct documents prior to your big day.

Caters can use an open air undercover barn to set up in should they wish to do so, and there is space on the courtyard, or in the field for food vans to serve food straight from the trailer.

Any guests paying for any form of accommodation on site will have breakfast provided on the Sunday morning by our in-house catering company.

Ceremonies

At the time of writing Brenscombe isn’t licensed for the legal part of marriage (but this is something that we are hoping to be granted permission for in due course), but did you know that the legal part of a wedding ceremony is made up of only 3 parts? So let’s break this down. The legal part of a Civil Wedding/ Civil Partnership consists of; Declaratory Words (I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment....), Contracting Words (I call upon these persons here present, to witness....), and the signing of the Marriage Register.

The rest of the service which includes the vows, exchanging of rings, readings/ music and symbolic rituals are purely ceremonial and can performed anywhere. This could be on the beach, on our big canoes with Brownsea Island as a backdrop, in your back garden, in a field, or barefoot in the woodland! The choice is yours. You have the freedom to write your own vows exactly how you want them, can include others in your ceremony such as family members, or children, and you can choose to include symbolic rituals (which I will talk about a little further down). The possibilities are endless. You can make a Celebrant led ceremony super special and personal.

So what is the difference between a Registrar coming to a venue, and an Independent Celebrant coming to a venue?

For a Registrar to be able to marry you at your venue of choice, the venue must be registered for marriage, you must get married under a fixed structure, that is undercover, and it must have a postcode.

So how do you make the marriage legal if you’re having a Celebrant Ceremony? Those 3 parts that I talked about earlier; Declaratory Words, Contracting Words, and signing of the Marriage Register, those 3 things happen in a Registry Office with 2 witnesses. At the time of writing this, this costs £46 (Dorset, UK), prices do vary from registry office to registry office, so you would need to check with your one.

The rest of the service is then conducted at a place of your choice by an Independent Celebrant. This could look very much like what you’d expect of a traditional wedding ie The entrance and being accompanied down the aisle, a welcome, maybe a reading, The I dos/ I wills, the vows, exchanging of the rings, the kiss, and the exit. With an independent Celebrant you have the freedom to make the I dos/ I wills and the vows funny if you wish them to be, traditional, or personal. You also have the freedom to include a symbolic ritual. So let’s talk a little about what on earth that is next.

What do you mean by symbolic ritual?

Symbolic Ceremony examples include, but are by no means limited to, Unity Candles, Dual Hearts Goblets, Sand Ceremonies, Jumping The Broom, Hand Fasting, Walking The Labyrinth, Wine Ceremonies, Rose Ceremonies, Crystal Ceremonies, you may wish to include a ring warming, or personal symbolism such as pebbles, shoes, milk or tea bags, to name but a few. Your ceremony can be tailor made to include one of these, or aspects of a few. The choice and freedom is yours.

Even once we are licensed this doesn’t mean you can’t have a Registrar led legal part, and Celebrant led ceremonial part should you wish to do so.

We have an in-house Celebrant who is also part of the Fellowship of Professional Celebrants, so we will always be able to help you find the right Celebrant to suit you as a couple.

If you’re doing the legalities elsewhere locally and using our venue for your reception, we may be able to help provide a mini bus shuttle service for your guests. If this is something you’re interested in then we can provide you with a quote.

Pricing

Pricing

£5795

What’s included

• ~41 Hours of Exclusive use of our beautiful Festival/ Marquee/ Barn/ Courtyard/ Woodland Wedding Venue nestled amongst the Purbeck Hills between Corfe Castle and Studland, with far reaching countryside views and distant sea views of Poole Harbour. 

• Exclusive use of our entire site

- From 5pm Friday for suppliers to set up. If you wish to have guests stay on the Friday night this is possible, but a breakfast won’t be included on the Saturday morning, and please bear in mind this is when we are doing all of our set up for your special day to make it look pretty and get everything ready. If you’re hiring in a marquee/ marquees let us know, as we may be able to make arrangements with your marquee company to allow them some extra time for set up.

- All day and night Saturday.

- Until 10am Sunday. Marquee companies will have until 2pm Sunday to remove the marquee/ marquees, but all other companies will be required to have removed everything by 10am to allow them to do so.

• Freedom to choose your own bar and catering companies to suit your style and budget (see individual sections for more information).

• A fully decorated Wedding Night Tipi equipped with a log burner, bed, bedding and fairy lights.

• Use of two barns, split level courtyard, large field, and our 12m x 12m (40ft x 40ft) Traditional Canvas Marquee with lighting,  (subject to availability) for the minimal fee of £295 if you wish to use it (if you wish to use our marquee it must be specified when booking).

• One of these areas set up with Trestle Tables and Benches for dining.

• Natural basin in the woods for woodland ceremonies or photo shoot.

• Campfire area at the top of the field (logs and marshmallows can all be organised on request for a small fee).

• Shelter and pole area for outdoor cinema if you wish to hire one in.

• First £500 of any of our hire stock and props of your choice at no charge should you wish to use them (not bespoke items).

• As much or as little designing and styling help as you wish. This is your day, and we want to help you have it the way you want it.   

• Wedding day assistance and coordination if you wish to have it. Some people like to, and for some people the attraction of an exclusive use venue is being left to it on the day. Whatever you want to do is fine, just please let us know in advance so additional staff can be organised if needed.

At Roka Bella Rose Weddings we specialise in making customised props and decor for our couples so that your wedding is completely unique. If you can’t see what you’re looking for we can discuss putting your look together for you.

We also have a huge range of hire stock which is constantly expanding. This ranges from table runners, and handmade and naturally dyed table runners, to table decorations, lanterns, ceremony backdrops, photo booth backdrops, bars and drink stations, giant outdoor games, giant boho deckchairs, wedding signs and more.

Lets Talk Numbers

Our marquee is available from April - October (subject to wind speeds). You may wish to consider hiring heaters for the cooler times in that period. You may also wish to consider hiring flooring and / or a dance floor. This is all down to personal preference.

When it comes to numbers we work on a worst case scenario so that we can always provide you with a contingency plan should the weather (which unfortunately we can’t control) decide that it would like throw a few super strong winds in our direction. We therefore don’t like to book more people in our marquee than we can accommodate for in our barns.

Should you wish to hire in Tipi Marquees for example, these can take stronger wind speeds and it will be at the discretion of the company you book as to what their terms & conditions are on this.

The venue price doesn’t change if you wish to have a larger number of guests and book Marquees to accommodate the number of guests you would like, but should the marquee company not be able to fulfil your booking, we can only save the day if we can fit the number of guests across our two barns.

There are so many different options for how you plan out your wedding, so we are going to focus on the tables and chairs for dining, and we can work around that.

Our Rustic Trestle Tables and Benches are 240cm in length.

If you seat 4 people on each side (8 people per table) this will give each person 60cm. This is comfortable.

If you seat 5 people on each side (10 people per table), this would give 48cm per person. This would be fine for children, but adults may find elbow room a little tight.

We shall call the two barns Barn With Low Beams (Barn One), and Barn With High Ceiling and Gallery (Barn Two), as this is how people always remember which is which.

This is what each of our barns will accommodate table wise

Barn One (radiator heating)

9 tables (3 rows of 3 tables) (72-90 people)

+ a 2 table one sided top table

(One extra double sided table could be fitted in at a push if we had to bring marquee dining inside)

Or

8 tables (2 rows of 4 tables) (64-80 people)

+ a 2 table one sided top table

Barn Two (overhead heater)

Lower Level

6 tables (2 rows of 3 tables) (48-60 people)

+ a 1 table one sided top table

Gallery

2 tables (16-20 people)

Marquee

10 tables (5 rows of 2 tables) (80 - 100 people)

+ a 2 table one sided top table

This only takes up just over half of the space in our marquee. This leaves space should you wish to have you bar and DJ/ band in the marquee, and space for a Dance floor should you wish to hire one.

14 tables (2 rows of 4 tables and 3 rows of 2 tables) (112-140 people*)

+ a 2 table one sided top table

This leaves no other space in the marquee.

*We will only book 128 people + an 8 person top table in our marquee due to how many people we can accommodate across THE TWO barns should there be gale force winds.

If you aren’t planning on using a marquee and are planning on just using the two barns, we would recommend using one barn for dining and the other for dancing. If you’re having an indoor ceremony too we would recommend having the ceremony and the dancing in the same barn, and the dining in the other one.

Music & Bands

We are very lucky to have lovely neighbours and be able to play music until 12am, but as we all know sound travels, and people like to chill out, sleep, and have children who need more shut eye than adults, and we want to fully respect this. We therefore ask that music is only played outside or in marquees until 10pm at the latest, and then brought inside to one of the barns, turned down a tad, and the windows and doors kept shut from 10pm - 12am should you wish to continue dancing the night away.