Some of the best weekends we have hosted at Hole Mill have been private celebrations — a 50th birthday, a 30th anniversary, a wedding of fourteen people, a wake that turned into a wake-and-celebration. Each one was different, but every host was navigating the same set of decisions about venue, catering, guest logistics and weather. This is what we have learned, written for anyone planning a private celebration in Devon — at Hole Mill or somewhere else.
Decide what you actually want first
The single most useful thing you can do early in the planning is write down, on one piece of paper, what kind of weekend you actually want. Big and rowdy or small and intimate? Catered or self-catered? One long lunch on the lawn or a series of separate evenings? It sounds obvious but most planners skip this and end up trying to design around what they imagine guests expect. Your guests almost always want a simpler weekend than you assume.
A good test: if you cancelled the formal sit-down dinner and replaced it with a long lunch and an open bar, would the weekend be better or worse? For most groups of fewer than thirty people, the answer is "better."
Total guest numbers and the venue
Devon has very few exclusive-use private venues that comfortably take twenty or thirty people. Most large group cottages cap at ten or twelve sleepers, and country house hotels cap at fifty-plus and start to feel impersonal below that. The middle ground — somewhere that sleeps twelve and can host an event for thirty — is rare, and it is where Hole Mill sits.
Practical headlines for our property:
- Sleeps 12+ in five ensuite bedrooms and two further sleeping spaces.
- Hosts up to 50 for a daytime celebration in the garden.
- Hosts up to 30 for a sit-down meal in the marquee or under the oak in summer.
- Two private acres, a wood-fired hot tub, an organic swimming pond and a pizza oven.
If your number is well above thirty for an evening event, you almost certainly need a bigger or more formal venue — Pynes House, Combe House, the Pig at Combe — and that is a different conversation. If your number is twenty to thirty, exclusive-use private venues like Hole Mill are usually the right answer. See our events page for examples of weekends we have hosted.
The four-day model
The format that works best for a milestone celebration is a long weekend, not a single evening. We have run dozens of "main event Saturday, decompress Sunday" weekends and the difference between a tense one-night event and a relaxed three-day weekend is enormous. Cost per head is similar (you save on catering for travelling guests), and the experience is incomparably better.
A working template:
- Friday afternoon: the host group arrive, settle in, set up.
- Friday evening: a casual welcome supper for the inner circle (10–12 people). Pizza oven, pasta, something easy.
- Saturday daytime: beach day, walks, hot tub, swimming. Day guests start arriving from lunchtime.
- Saturday evening: the main event — sit-down meal, drinks, music.
- Sunday morning: brunch on the lawn for everyone still around. Decompress.
- Sunday afternoon: day guests leave, hosts have the place to themselves again.
This pattern works for birthdays, anniversaries, family reunions, and small weddings. We have run all of them.
Catering — three honest options
In our experience, there are three ways to feed thirty people at a Devon celebration, in order of cost and ease:
- Self-catered with a hand from professionals. You cook the easy stuff yourself, and book a local chef or caterer for the main meal only. Hole Mill has a 14-seat refectory table, an Aga and a separate electric oven; many of our hosts cook Friday and Sunday and bring in chefs on Saturday. Total cost per head is the lowest of the three.
- Hired in catering, plate-up service. A local catering firm delivers cooked food to the kitchen, plates it up, serves it, washes up, leaves. Cost per head is about double a self-catered weekend. We can recommend three or four East Devon caterers we have worked with — every one of them excellent.
- Full-service catering with on-site chef and front-of-house team. A chef cooks live, two front-of-house staff serve, the kitchen is taken over for the duration. Cost per head is about three to four times a self-catered weekend. Use this for a meaningful occasion (wedding, big anniversary) where the hosts genuinely should not be cooking.
A middle option some hosts use: pizza night Friday (we light the pizza oven, you bring the toppings), catered main meal Saturday, brunch Sunday by the host. That hits a sweet spot.
Drinks
Always supply your own. Even where venues offer corkage-free arrangements, buying retail and stocking a fridge is dramatically cheaper than venue-supplied. For East Devon, Lyme Bay Winery (sparkling wine, cider, gin), Otter Brewery (cask ales) and Branscombe Vineyard (small, well-regarded) are all worth supporting locally. Buy more sparkling than you think and less spirits than you think — that is our consistent observation across hundreds of weekends.
Music and noise
This is the single biggest constraint in rural Devon. Most country properties have noise restrictions in their planning permissions or have neighbours who will complain. Hole Mill sits in a private valley with no close neighbours — we have never had a noise complaint — but you should always check explicitly with whatever venue you are considering. Ask:
- What time does music need to stop indoors? Outdoors?
- Is amplified music allowed at all?
- Are there decibel limits?
- Can you have a DJ? A band? A solo musician?
If music is central to your event, the answers to these questions matter more than almost anything else.
Children
If your guest list includes children, you need to design for them in advance. A holiday cottage that is great for a 12-adult weekend can be a nightmare with eight kids running loose — open fires, hot tubs, ponds, stairs without gates. Hole Mill is very child-friendly (we have hosted countless family birthdays) but we always advise hosts to discuss specific risks before arrival: who is supervising the pond? Is the hot tub locked when adults are not nearby? Where are the kids sleeping?
For older children (8+), the property is brilliant — they can swim, run, light fires, climb things, and stay out of the adults' way. For under-fives, you need a parent or designated adult on duty.
Day guests vs. overnight guests
Most celebrations have a smaller core group sleeping over and a larger circle joining for the main event. Practical things to plan:
- Where do day guests park? At Hole Mill we have parking for six cars on-site, plus a designated overflow field for events. Always ask any venue about this.
- Where do day guests use the loo? A 50-person event needs more than the house bathrooms. Hire a single posh portable loo (about £350 for a weekend) — it is the single most worthwhile expense at any garden event over twenty people.
- How do day guests get home? No taxis turn up reliably in rural Devon after 11 pm. Either your guests stay over (we can recommend nearby B&Bs), or you arrange a minibus from Sidmouth or Honiton.
The weather
Plan for both, always. Even in July you can get a wet day in Devon, and a 30-person lunch in the rain in a marquee is genuinely lovely if you have planned for it; the same lunch with no shelter is miserable. We hire a 6 m × 12 m clearspan marquee for any of our hosts who request one — it pitches on the meadow next to the lawn and is available year-round.
Finally: leave time to enjoy it
The hosts of the best weekends we have ever hosted always do the same thing: they finish the heavy planning a fortnight before the event, hand the active management to a designated friend during the weekend itself, and actually attend their own celebration. Build that into the budget — even if it means hiring a wedding planner for the day, or asking your most organised friend to be on call.
Hole Mill has hosted weddings, milestone birthdays, family reunions, wakes, retreats and more weekends than we can count. If you are thinking about a private celebration in Devon and want to talk through the logistics, our events page has more detail and a contact form. Or check our availability directly — most celebration weekends book a year in advance.