Cameron and Hollie, May 2025: A simply beautiful, love filled Riverhill Wedding day

For our latest Wedding Blog, I asked Cameron and Hollie lots of questions about how they found the dry hire wedding experience at Riverhill. Their answers are so thorough and helpful, I really urge you to read this if you are planning a dry-hire Wedding anywhere (But you should really consider having it here!).

I loved Cameron and Hollie’s day, they remained true to themselves throughout and the whole day was a genuine reflection of them, with their love at the centre of everything they chose, it was a wonder to witness!

What drew you to Riverhill as a venue?
We first visited Riverhill on a weekend walk and absolutely loved it. As we walked around we talked about how gorgeous it would be as a wedding venue and so when we got engaged it was the first place we looked into! We viewed a few other venues and they all felt very corporate, with little personalisation or time in the venue and a lot of pressure to book on the spot. When we met with Kate at Riverhill everything clicked, there was such a focus on making sure the venue would be right for us (and vice versa!), a huge amount of flexibility and a genuine joy for facilitating the wedding experience. When we left I (Hollie) cried in the car because I was so relieved, we'd found the perfect place!

Did you always know you wanted to go dry hire?
Not at all! In fact, before browsing venues we probably would have avoided it, however we would 100% do it again.

How did you find the dry hire process? Is there anything you wish you had known sooner?
It allowed us to personalise so much more and only have to include, manage and pay for the things that we actually wanted. The suppliers that Riverhill suggests are so brilliant and experienced that it didn't feel like we were starting from scratch. They all knew each other and the venue so well that there weren't any stresses, we were completely supported on the day and felt like VIPs.

Do you have any tips or advice to share with other couples starting their dryhire adventure?
There are a lot of logistics, a simple spreadsheet to keep track does go a long way. We also created a separate wedding email address so all the vendors were in one place and we could both jump on responses when we had time.

Having calls with suppliers and being able to share visuals (especially for a marquee) is really helpful in making sure you can achieve what you would like. We wanted a clear marquee with lots of lights and didn't have the technical know-how to explain that in words. We also made sure to be there during set up on Thursday/ Friday to see how things were coming together and that helped us know how everything looked in advance of the day. If possible, it helps to keep suppliers to a minimum so there are fewer moving parts on the day itself.  

Make the most of the time! Riverhill really kindly let you set up on the Thursday and we were back and forth to the venue so often that by the wedding day we felt very comfortable there. We also had a private vow reading in Brooms field and a pre wedding dinner with our families in our marquee the night before the wedding - time goes so fast on the day so enjoy the venue being yours. Having a membership card to visit Riverhill and bring family members in the lead up to the wedding was also so special, everyone felt really comfortable knowing the space and felt welcomed by the team.

We also assigned a family member (Cameron's brother in law) to be a contact person for suppliers on the day, this was really helpful as we had a couple of suppliers who didn't know the site and he was on hand to troubleshoot!

What was your priority for your day? What was most important to you as a couple?
We wanted the day to be authentic to us and our priorities were making sure that people were well fed, had lots to drink and felt valued as guests. Kate and our suppliers were essential in helping us to include personal touches to the entire wedding and created a seamless, easy experience.

What did you eat and drink?

So much delicious food! We had afternoon tea/fizz and cakes straight after the ceremony, then for dinner had Italian mezze food, paella and a trio of desserts. We also had burgers and chips later in the night. Tandem went absolutely above and beyond, even creating a custom dessert for us based on flavours from one of our favourite meals as a couple. They were flexible and sensitive about dietary needs, kept everything running smoothly and even kept our mums stocked up on cups of tea - essential.

It was really important to us to be able to provide drinks for our guests and we hired a chiller trailer through our suppliers so that everything could be kept cold and served professionally. We bought supermarket wine & beer, and had two cocktails that people could choose from which the team from Tandem served our guests. The Aperol Spritz was very popular!

First dance song?
We had a Ceilidh to kick off the dancing (would highly recommend) so we didn't do the traditional first dance. We instead did a last dance by ourselves once all the guests had left, to 'Slow Dancing' by Aly and AJ.

What was your favourite part of your day?

We both loved the ceremony, the Walled Garden is such a beautiful setting to get married in. We also had a brilliant celebrant from Sevenoaks Council (Courtney) and with Kate's help in arranging seating, our own music and a surprise ring bearer, we felt like we were able to make it really personal to us. We love coming back to visit, standing in the spot where we said our vows and seeing the garden change throughout the year.  

All the Details…
Catering — Tandem (https://www.tandemcateringsevenoaks.co.uk)
Marquee — Manor Hire Marquees (https://www.manorhire.co.uk)
Flowers — Wild Gardener (https://www.wildgardener.co.uk). We only had table flowers as the gardens are already stunning as a setting, Rachael grows everything locally in her garden and was so lovely and involved.
Band — Juniper (https://juniperfolk.co.uk)
Photobooth — Megabooth (https://megabooth.com)

With extra huge thanks to Cameron and Hollie, who are deep in the newborn baby trenches and still, somehow, found time to give me such detailed and helpful answers.

ps) A note on Hollie’s dress - you can’t really see in the images but it was GLITTERY, in the most subtle amazing way, she left a little trail of glitter and joy throughout the gardens (And in Ed’s house, which he absolutely LOVED!)