Bovey Castle, Dartmoor www.boveycastle.com

My wife and I recently attended a wedding at Bovey Castle. The surroundings are lovely and the hotel's decor is very nice. The service however was shocking. During the wedding breakfast a waitress spilt a cup of coffee over my wife. The apology was very curt and the waitress made no offer of a clean cloth or napkin, and didn't even ask my wife if she was Ok, bearing in mind a scalding cup of coffee had just landed in her lap. My wife was left to clean up the mess using a dirty table napkin and then had to go to the toilet (which involved walking from one side of the hotel to the other and through reception and the other hotel guests, covered in coffee) in order to get some damp tissue to try and salvage the dress. No offer to cover the cost of dry cleaning was made.

The disco/party was in a separate part of the hotel and had its own bar. This bar charged a premium for drinks however and only had Fosters on draught. When I went to the hotel bar to buy a pint of Amstel I was very rudely refused service (in front of a number of other guests) and when I queried this I was told very abruptly that the bar staff had orders not to serve anybody from the wedding. I took this up with reception and was told that they didn't want wedding guests getting in the way of their "exclusive" guests. When I explained that it was the only bar selling the drink I wanted they agreed to bring it over to the bar we were in for the wedding. However, when I got the bill at the end they had charged me £4.00 per pint, rather than the bar price of £3.50.

Overall my wife and I have never been anywhere where we have been so obviously treated by staff as second class citizens, and so cynically exploited for our money. Considering what was spent on the wedding I would expect to be treated as an "exclusive guest" but they made it very clear that they didn't really want our presence or custom, just our money. If you're considering this for a wedding venue and you want a day where you and your guests are treated as special then I wouldn't recommend this as a venue. If you want your guests to be made to feel like second class citizens and leave feeling ripped off and exploited (and covered in coffee) then this is the place for you.