St John's Hyde Park

Booking manager, Andrejs. Was very stressful to work with. He tried to request a big extra charge a week before our event on WhatsApp outside of our terms and conditions agreed over email. Believe this is a scam to make personal money

We had significant problems with the venue manager on the day, and these were significant enough that even with all the positive elements of the venue, I would be very reluctant to hold an event here in future. When I viewed the venue, the smaller second hall was an empty space, but when we arrived for our event, it was fully set up as a nursery. The venue manager had forgotten to notify the nursery that it had been hired, and it was no longer possible to clear it away so we were forced to hold part of our event in a nursery. This was not ideal. Part of the reason we had hired the second hall was to have an accessible route into the main hall for our wheelchair users and to wheel in heavy catering equipment. However, what had not been communicated to us was that the vicar would be holding meetings throughout several hours of our booking, meaning that we were unable to use this access route. We had made it clear that wheelchair access was an important consideration for our use of the space, and so it was very disappointing that the route being blocked off during our booking had not been mentioned in advance, and was poorly communicated on the day, with little to no indication of how long it would be out of access. The venue manager had told us we were able to use the space that usually holds the altar as part of the event, but when our bar tried to set up we were told that for religious reasons they could not be set up in that area of the hall. At no point had it been communicated that there were any limitations on the use of that area, and so what could have been easily planned for with advance communication ended up being an additional problem to sort on the day. We ran into repeated issues where elements that had been pre-arranged were forgotten or badly handled. We requested no chairs for our booking; we arrived to a room of 200 chairs and the information that there would be a £100 charge to put them away. We hired linens but were not given the right quantity so could not cover all of our tables. We hired parking spaces, but one of our drivers was shouted at for parking in the designated bay. We hired coat-racks but had to pull up the email chain to prove that we had ordered them and weren't lying. We confirmed via email that we could play music through the speaker system and then were told on the day that all we could do was put an ipad next to the lectern microphone. Our bar emailed the venue manager in advance and pre-arranged to leave glassware for collection in the morning, but when I tried to leave the venue the manager became very aggressive with me about why these glasses had been left behind. He also interrupted the event itself to ask our company founder about bank details for returning our deposit, rather than speaking to either of the event co-ordinators who had been speaking with him throughout the afternoon, and after having got this information still continued to demand it from multiple members of our staff throughout the night and the following morning. When I originally met Andrejs and viewed the venue, I had every confidence that our booking would be handled well. However, every single member of my team who interacted with Andrejs complained to me about their experience with him, as did several of my suppliers. I have listed the main practical issues we ran into which added to the stress of the day, but the interpersonal issues made what was otherwise a really lovely party into an actively unpleasant experience for the organisational team.

The venue needs a bit of work on some of the walls it Could be better maintained. Also we were unfairly fined / charged for dry cleaning even though we paid for cleaning - very disappointing