An Eden Valley wedding barn has been crowned the best in the North West.
Holesfoot, just outside Appleby, has been recognised in The Wedding Industry Awards as the North West’s best wedding barn venue.
Owner Olivia Moss, 30, of Kings Meaburn, said winning the award was a very proud moment for both herself and her team.
She added: “We’re so chuffed about our win, we were up against some lovely venues so it was just nice to go and know that we were appreciated. But to win was a really nice surprise, it was just amazing.
“We didn’t expect to win at all, but I thought well let’s do it anyway for the experience and networking opportunity and the chance to meet all the different suppliers from North West.
“I’ve got a really lovely team and I just thought even if we just get a special mention and didn’t win it would just be nice for them to give them a chance to reflect on what we’ve achieved.”
The venue is now also in the running for The Wedding Industry Awards’ national finals in January – where it will go up against other regional winners from across the country.
But it all started four years ago when Olivia decided to buy the estate – which was at first, very run down and in desperate need of some TLC.
She said: “I bought Holesfoot four-and-a-half years ago during Covid and it was basically just a run-down private estate. It had been in someone’s family for quite a while and needed quite a bit of renovation.
“So I swooped in and spent lockdown doing the big renovations on the main Georgian manor house building and turning the barn behind it into a wedding barn.
“We also added a couple of cottages and some glamping in and the idea I had was to give couples a private estate you can essentially move into for a few days to have a long weekend wedding with all your family and friends.”
Holesfoot has now been running for two-and-a-half years after Olivia spent two years transforming the site from a dilapidated estate into the sprawling countryside wedding venue it is today.
The site can accommodate up to 60 guests and also boasts an Italian garden terrace as well as 20 acres of private grounds including meadows, a lake and woodlands.
But building the venue up is feat Olivia also hugely credits her staff for helping her achieve – who inspired her decision to enter the awards.
Olivia attended the awards ceremony with her head of housekeeping and right hand woman Shara who she credits as being a key part of Holesfoot.
Olivia said: “We’ve had a really really successful two years running and I really felt our hard work was worth something so we entered into the awards and we didn’t expect anything, I just thought it would be nice to have that feedback.
“I had absolutely no background in weddings to begin with and I just completely winged the first year and guessed what I was doing and tried my best.
“But it’s been amazing and just building with the team and going from not knowing anything to creating something that you hope is going to work to it working really well has been an incredible experience so far.”
Olivia added that she felt Holesfoot’s ethos of creating exclusive, quality weddings is one of the biggest draws that make the venue stand out from the crowd.
She said: “Our main thing is we’re not a conveyor belt wedding venue. My ethos is quality over quantity, so in summer we have a maximum of two weddings a week and one every weekend in winter.
“That way we give couples time here with friends and family for two or three days and they’re not having to check out so someone else can check in.
“We are very much into creating that quality for each wedding and getting the absolute best for the couple while getting to know them, plan with them and make it absolutely perfect for them so we’re not just churning out the same wedding every week.”
Olivia said that looking forward, she is hoping to improve Holesfoot even more in years to come.
She said: “I’m more about taking things as they come but I’m also all about pushing forward and having plans to make Holesfoot better and better.
“I’d like to create more accommodation and perfect every aspect of the way we run it to make it the best possible venue we can get here.
“But the award has made me so proud of everything we have achieved and what the whole team has achieved.
“It’s also made me reflective of how far we’ve come since we started out, we were showing couples basically around a building site at once point, so it’s really just amazing to reflect on that.”
Other Cumbrian businesses named in the North West list are Wolf & Raven Photography, based in Dalton-in-Furness, tailor HL Creations in Kendal and videographer Jay Gilmour, of Brampton.
