The Holiday House
I LOVE the idea of planning surprises and trips and spreadsheets etc. but actually putting these ideas into motion I’m not so good at (severe lack of wedding planning during the last 10 months is evidence of this). The first and main part of planning Tom’s surprise 30th birthday week was working out how many people liked him enough to pay a chunk of money to spend three days in a house with him (turns out more than I thought) and then finding a house to fit all of us inside. In the end I went for Beechgrove House – near the sea (because sea = happiness), dog friendly (because Otis will always be the guest of honour at any party I plan) and not too far from Bristol as travel time is wasted time during a weekend getaway.
Beechgrove House
These plans were finalised and paid for back in November which meant FOUR whole months of pretty much not speaking to Thomas. If you tell me a secret it’ll go to the grave with me but if I have a secret of my own…. not so much. Luckily Thomas is the most laid back human that ever walked this earth (probably) and so the next few months went pretty smoothly – no interrogations about Birthday plans, no ‘WHY?!’ when I asked him to book a week off work, no questioning why his closest friends hadn’t made any effort to see him during his 30th birthday week and so on and so forth.
Leading up to ‘T-Day’, as it became known, was mainly me talking about all the stuff I would do in preparation and then not doing it which meant that the fortnight before was preeeeeetty hectic. I chose a colour scheme and then ordered a LOT of balloons and party bits and bobs from Candle and Cake (http://www.candleandcake.co.uk/new – again I’m sorry for introducing you to companies that are going to seduce you and make you give away your money, but just do me a favour and go and have a look on their Instagram page. It’s balloon porn). It took all of my willpower not to buy rose gold everything but if I was to convince everyone that this was a party for Fat Tom and not me then I had to resist. I went with a multicoloured theme and then I did a secret squirrel mission to drop them to Somerset with my best friend Roxanne who was Chief Party Co-Ordinator/RemindEmilieToActuallySortStuffOut-er/Balloon Boss… we will talk about the balloons later. So, Roxannie was on the decorations, Mama Darke was making the multi-coloured themed birthday cake, Yas and Amy were in charge of party games, I did the most mind bogglingly excessive and complicated online food shop I will probably (hopefully) ever do (feeding 14 people takes a LOT of maths skills) – we were good to go.
When T-Day finally came around I was so nervous – a few months of planning and all I had to do was NOT ruin the surprise for another 12 hours. I was paranoid that Thomas wasn’t asking enough questions and therefore knew what was going on and was trying to help me to not ruin the surprise that was already ruined because he knew about it… So I started feeding him some white lies; ‘you will need to pack really warm clothes’, ‘it’s just you me and the dog and it’s something we’ve never done before’, ‘I will pack lots of alcohol….. to help us stay warm’ etc. I was hoping he would think we were going on glamping/canopy under the starts type of trip as we have talked about those before (but have you SEEN how expensive it is to sleep in a treehouse?!) and it turns out that trick worked as that’s exactly where he thought we were heading. Sneaky.
We planned it so that everyone else would arrive at Beechgrove House early evening and then Tom and I would arrive at 8pm. I made him drive the first chunk of the journey so that I could frantically text everyone and find out where to go once we arrived and where they would be hiding. A couple of people downloaded that stalker app where you can see exactly where someone is so that once I took over the driving they could track us and be ready. My turn to drive and this crazy fog appeared out of nowhere, like actual end of the world fog, which was really not ideal when you’re driving country lanes in the dark looking out for a tiny sign post saying the house name. I had blindfolded Tom ‘because I only want you to see the amazing view when I’m ready’ NOT ‘because you will recognise everyone’s cars on the driveway, especially your pal’s bright yellow giant van’. I had the sat nav off because I was worried Sat Nav Susan was going to go ‘You have reached your destination…of Beechgrove House where a surprise 30th Birthday party awaits you Fat Tom’ so I was on my own. They apparently all watched me miss the turning and drive a mile in the wrong direction before eventually finding my way there. I would like to add that Fat Tom was sat beside me, blindfold on, merrily ‘rapping’ along to Kanye (though I think the lack of vision affected all of his other senses too because it was not good) while I was driving at 4 mph through the fog, ghosts and zombies.
ANYWAY, we got there and here is what happened next (please note Otis walking straight past the 14 people hiding on the staircase):
It was perfect! Everyone managed to stay totally silent and Otis didn’t freak out and howl when he noticed everyone! Tom was totally stunned (see that face?!) and there were definitely some tears shed. Yas had created a mega spreadsheet with everyone’s Indian Takeaway so she set off to collect that while we had a tour of the incredible, MTV Cribs style house that Roxannie had decorated SO beautifully. With balloons yeah?
I really hope that you noticed the balloons in those photos and were so flabbergasted with the size and fabulousness of them that you fell off your chairs. If you didn’t then don’t tell me. I nearly had to remortage my home for those bloody balloons – turns out helium is kind of pricy?! You can imagine how pleased I was that by Saturday morning half of them had already deflated!
The weekend was just magical. A lot of food, a lot of gin, a lot of fun and games and a lot of hot tubbing. Some of my memories are a tad gin-hazy so photos will have to tell the story instead:
Friday Night: Indian takeway (the one food Tom really doesn’t like but the only takeaway option we could find!) and present opening followed by a very messy and aggressively competitive game of Ring of Fire.
I also splashed out and hired some very sober musicians to come and perform live classical music for us while we played Ring of Fire:
I took myself to bed at about 2am which is a skill I have always been very proud of – knowing when to call it a night. Thomas – not so much. He woke me up at 4am waving his trunks in my face telling me to wake up and join them in the hot tub. Alas, I did not. In the morning I woke to find this next to me:
We also discovered Matt’s phone and a wallet in a pool of water next to the hot tub too, that Matt’s bed hadn’t been slept in and eventually found Matt passed out totally starkers in the TV room. Rock and roll. I won’t post a photograph of that.
Saturday Daytime: We had a big cooked breakfast then went on a long walk to Lyme Regis beach with Otis (who thought the whole weekend was in aid of celebrating his existence), sat on the beach while Otis swam, had ice cream and chips and then made our way back to the house.
Saturday Evening: We all dressed up in nice clean shiny clothes (I had packed Tom’s dickie bow for him), ate an enormous spag bol and then played party games all night long. Yas and Brad need a special mention for creating the Beechgrove Pub Quiz. It was the real deal – teams, answer sheets, hilarious visuals and trophies. There were a few music rounds (because Tom is a music man), general knowledge and then a film round…. Guess the film from the movie poster (spot Tom):
I was on the winning team with Roxannie and Tom T and to celebrate we did the only thing you can do with tiny trophies that have Tom’s face on them… shots:
The next game, and potentially a highlight of my whole entire life, was ‘Bin Bag Ball Gowns’; dressing up our boyfriends in 30 minutes (which goes really fast when you’ve been drinking) using plastic bags, paper, tape and paper plates. We had a couple of brides, a mermaid and a Victoria’s Secret catwalk model in the mix and I think they all looked FAAAAABULOUS:
And a special close up for this rugged beauty:
Following a couple of hours in the hot tub discussing all sorts of really deep, meaningful and intellectual stuff (‘would you rather have a head the size of a tennis ball or a watermelon’) we all eventually made our way to our beds. Even Matt.
Sunday: Bacon sarnies, naps, sweets and chocolates, board games, roast beef cooked by the birthday boy, more board games, epic leftover bolognese and cheese sandwiches, more sweets and chocolate, horror films, a bath and then bed in the biggest, comfiest bed I have ever ever slept in. The perfect Sunday
I chose on Sunday night to tell Thomas about the next part of his surprise birthday week which also involved ticking something off my bucket list, something I haven’t done for a while – blog post to follow very shortly.
Monday: On Monday we had to leave so we don’t talk about Monday.
To conclude, a bit of cheese: thank you Kate & Tom’s for finding this amazing house and letting us rent it for our party weekend and pretend that it was real life, thank you friends for being nice enough humans that we all tolerated each other for three whole days and had excellent fun and thank you Thomas for being a swell enough guy that we all thought you worthy of the stress and pennies that go into organising a surprise like this one. It was one of my favourite weekends in all of ever.
Over and out.
As a little aside – I’ve had a lot of questions on Instagram about the house we stayed in. if you’re ever planning something similar to this or a hen weekend or you want to holiday in the UK somewhere really special then you need to go and check out Kate and Tom’s (http://kateandtoms.com/). This post isn’t sponsored (I would’ve left out the naked person on the sofa story) and we paid full whack for the house, I just adore the company and want to rave about them because although they’re kind of niche (enormous, one of a kind, belong in the pages of a magazine type homes), if you’re looking at booking a holiday/party/hen weekend type house then they are definitely worth a look. If people are paying per head or per room then they’re not too pricey either – we paid £140 each for three nights which we all thought was really fair given how incredible the house was, for example, our room had TWO bathrooms and an upstairs and disco lights and music in the shower. Whilst searching for Beechgrove House I also found where I would like my hen do and where we’re all going to stay during our wedding week next year so I will warn you that perusing their website is both wonderfully dreamy and also a little bit dangerous.
emilie waffles 
This was the BEST WEEKEND EVER!!!!!
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