Weddings in Madrid

We found this venue on the website www.bodaclick.com after months of searching for the perfect place to celebrate our big day.

It is described by the owner as a 'victorian style house' and its situated high up in the mountains of the sierra just north of Madrid centre. The house has two rooms for the bride and groom to get dressed in and a large room below where you can hold the wedding meal and disco. This room opens out into the garden.

The garden is beautiful - big, very green with lots of colourful flowers and plants. The views from the garden of the surrounding sierra are amazing. In summer, the garden can be used for the meal rather than eating indoors, which is what we did.

Another option is to hold the ceremony in the gardens. We held our wedding ceremony in the garden looking out over the sierra and this made for some really lovely photos.

At the end of the garden there is a pool (just for show unfortunately, there is strictly no swimming!) and once the ceremony is over, the guests can head down to the pool area and the veranda alongside it for the cocktail. The veranda is quite large and can also be used for the wedding ceremony on a bad day but the views aren't half as stunning from this point.

I can really recommend this venue, our guests loved it and the kids had a fantastic time running around the gardens. For people situated in the centre of Madrid it is a little far out (approximately a 40 minutes trip by road) but the gardens and house which are well looked after by the owner and the stunning views make it totally worthwhile. It's perfect for a summer wedding in Madrid and imagining how lovely the views would be in winter with the snowy mountains, I imagine it would make a real special venue for a winter wedding too.

The venue gave us the details of this caterer based in the centre of Madrid who cater for all sorts of events, not just weddings.

Our first meeting with them involved looking over menu choices and prices. We were offered one reasonable set price per guest which included venue hire for the whole day, an hour-long cocktail with appetisers, a four course meal including a wedding cake for dessert, floral table centres, champagne toasts and a free bar all day from the cocktail until the end of the disco (7 hours in total). At our second meeting we confirmed the date, signed contracts and paid the deposit of 2000 Euros. The remainder of the payment was paid in two parts - half a week before the wedding, the other half just after the meal on the day before the disco began.

A few months before the wedding we were invited to a trial meal and were told 6 people could come along in total. At the trial we got to see the table set up as it would be on the day and tested the appetisers and full meal and the wines and champagne that would be used on the day. This was all included in the price we were already paying.

On the day of the wedding, the caterers took care of setting up the tables and favours according to our table plan, setting up the ceremony (along with providing chair hire) and the usual services. The waitering staff made sure everyone had drinks all day and even brought seconds (and thirds!) of the food around during the meal.

At the end of the night, they were in no hurry to get rid of us and carried on until we were ready to leave. All in all, fabulous service that we were very happy with!

This company is a husband and wife team (Felix and Julia) based in Villanueva de la Cañada and photograph throughout the whole of Madrid (and possibly further afield). Julia is actually another Brit living in Madrid! I found this company searching photographers in Madrid online on and was surprised when Julia wrote back to me in English explaining that she was British too!

Julia or Felix will take photos all day starting from the bride getting ready to about 10-15 minutes after the first dance. There are various packages involving traditional albums, digital albums and CDs of photos. For around 1200 Euros we chose the second best option: photos all day, a 12x12 inch 'storybook' digital album and a DVD with all of the photos from the day (1500+ in total!!) in high resolution. The most expensive option was the same plus a traditional album. The traditional album was a standard album, one photo attached per page whilst the digital album is a book with photos printed on the pages in various designs. We decided againt the best package as we knew we'd be able to put our own traditional album together by printing our favourite photos from the DVD.

There is also the option to add smaller 8x8 inch albums to your order as gifts for your parents. We ordered one for each set of parents and the album is exactly the same are our album just smaller.

A few days after your wedding, you will be emailed a link to their website to view your photos. In the meantime, Julia and fleix will begin putting together your album. We then received a link to our album - over 30 pages telling the story of the day. From these pages we had to pick out 20 of our favourites. If any of your favourite photos are missing from the pages, that's no problem - Julia and Felix are happy to swap photos around for you.

Once you are happy with the pages which make up your album, you choose one of the photos for the front page and off it goes to be printed. About three to four weeks later we received and email to say our album was now ready and off we went to collect it and pay the final balance (At the time, 200 Euros was required as a deposit and the rest paid when the album was collected).

Whilst we would have like more formal photos in our album (they are mostly informal shots), we are really happy with the service provided and our albums. Taking into account the fact that you are provided with a DVD with all your photos in high resolution so you can print them as many times as you like, we found this to be a really great offer.

We were given the contact details of Angel from Emit Sonido by the venue. This DJ was part of the package that came with the venue and luckily, we were very happy with their services. After out first contact by telephone, Angel set up a username and password so that we had access to a private webpage set up for us. There we had to fill in all our contact details and let him know what music we required for each part of the day from the cocktail and meal, to the disco afterwards. For each part of the day, they had a large selection of music styles from clasical and opera to R&B and pop, 70's/80's disco and flamenco, plus many others. For each style we had to decide if we loved, liked or hated that style so the DJ was able to assess our music requirements. Each style of music had samples you could listen to in case it wasn't so clear. Under each section of the day there was a box which could be filled in for any special requests or any comments you needed to add.

On the day, Emit Sonido set up speaker in the garden for the ceremony and used the CD we had already prepared with our wedding cereminy planner for that. Throughout the rest of the day, the music was just as we had asked for and every song we'd asked for in particular was played.

At the end of the night, I was given a CD by Angel which was a recording of the ceremony and all the music played at the disco during the evening - a really lovely, unexpected memento of the day.