The Forest Hotel in Solihull has a lovely room for a reception. Its really clean and you can tell the staff take care to get things right. We arrived early when they were brushing the front and attaching white ribbons to the ornamental bay trees.I was impressed by two other things: the toilets and the heart shaped pattern that the glasses were arranged in.

Had an interesting day yesterday. Went to the "think local 4 business show" in Burton. The initiative is to get local businesses working together. The guest speaker was Ruth Badger. I wasn't really looking forward to seeing her. I hadn't particularly liked her bolshy attitude on the Apprentice but she was actually funny and excellent at telling stories Of course oozing with confidence! but still inspirational which is just as well as she markets herself as a motivational speaker.

Now here's an unusual offer. I'm willing to bet an offer such as this has never appeared on any balloon website!

We have acquired a barrow full of ornamental gourds. We will give you 3 per table to decorate your venue absolutely free if you are having an autumn themed wedding or party or a halloween celebration. This is truly a unique offer and combined with our  gold and chocolate balloon bouquets will give your venue the X factor!

All we ask is that you purchase balloon decor  to the value of £145 or more and that your event takes place before Christmas.

It's time to start thinking about what we will do for our Christmas  and New Year packages. They should appear soon on the website.

Re: yesterday's wedding.
Jim went back to the "George" to collect the equipment we had left there and met Jean and Jeff whose wedding it had been. Jean said the balloons were lovely and the exploding balloon "whooshed" and went everywhere. That comment made our day! Thanks Jean and Jeff.

After doing some stocktaking we realiised we could do with freeing some of it up, so we are going to have some really good special offers over the next month. A different one each week! Half price bargains coming up soon!

Today we were at the George Hotel in Lichfield. It's a listed building and the room certainly has a "Georgian" feel about it. The ceiling was too delicate to have an expoding balloon attached to it, as our customers would have liked, so we came up with this idea.

Recently we decorated a venue called Arden House. It's part of Warwick University campus (a place I'm familiar with as my son is studying physics there).
It is a conference centre, also used for weddings and it is pristine. Not a term I use lightly. If it were my job to award marks out of 10 for cleanliness to the venues we visit then most marks would be less than 5.
There is an Italian garden, which for the event was lit with candles and tea lights in paper lanterns.
Another effective idea was a "tree" made with thin branches, on which were suspended little toys for the children. The colour theme was Cadbury purple.

Last October we complemented an autumnal wedding with gold, chocolate brown and ivory balloons. The hosts had spent a great deal of time and energy producing truly unique decorations. The result was spectacular! And what was really impressive - cheap.
I f you enjoy messing about with crafty bits and pieces, drying whole tangerines, slices of lemon, strawberries, cutting out shapes and wrapping them with raffia, collecting gourds -
then you could spend some happy months absorbed in a new activity. What a soothing way to allay pre wedding nerves.

And here are our table bouquets.

Welcome to our new blog!

I thought it might be interesting to share with you the imaginative ideas that people come up with for their weddings and parties. We travel all over the Midlands and have seen some fascinating themes which in the course of this blog, we will pass on. We'd love to hear your creative ideas.
I'll start with yesterday.

This couple hired a beautiful marquee. What we thought was a particularly romantic touch was that each guest was given a balloon to release and send up into the air with a loving thought for the happiness of the bride and groom.