Terms & Conditions

Please note: You must have suitable wedding insurance which covers the full costs of your wedding with us, which is in both parties interest to have in place. We will require a copy of this insurance within 30 days of your booking with us. which.co.uk has an impartial selection of insurances available, or you may wish to use a broker, or find your own insurances.

THE CONTRACT

1. Your contract is with us, Alexander House Rentals Limited (Registered Number 7715277) and may be trading as Thistle Weddings and Events, and Alexander House. VAT Registration number 2406682819.

2. We appreciate that on occasions someone else (such as a parent) may wish to make payments due to us on your behalf. We are happy to accept such payments, but please note that unless we agree otherwise with you in writing you are legally responsible for any payments due to us.

3. In these terms, “venue” means the appropriate agreed venue at Alexander House, Duchally Road, Auchterarder, PH31PW where your wedding/celebration is agreed to be held, “wedding/celebration” also means (where applicable) a civil partnership, wedding/celebration package” means the services relating to your wedding which we agree to provide to you; and “working day” means a day other than a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday in England when banks in London are open for business.

MAKING YOUR BOOKING

4. We may agree to you making a provisional booking with us, but this is not legally binding on either you or us unless and until a contract is entered into by both parties, thereby confirming any provisional booking.

5. Orangery Bookings – if after receiving our quotation for your wedding/celebration package, to secure your dates, you should within 7 days of the date of our quotation pay a non-refundable deposit of £1250 of your hire charge. 2 further payments will be due 12 months and 6 months prior to your wedding. Should your wedding date be less than 6 months from the date of booking the full balance will be due. You should include a copy of your wedding/celebration insurance documents if you have secured this, if not, we require a copy of this within 30 days of the confirmed booking. Payments can be made by Visa, Mastercard debit or credit cards or bank transfer. A £1250.00 good housekeeping security deposit will be required 14 days prior to your arrival at Alexander House, and will be returned within 14 days, subject to there being no damage to the property or grounds. Please see Main House Self Catering & Glamping Terms which will also apply to Orangery Wedding stays where accommodation has been booked.

DIY Intimate Main House Weddings – if after receiving our quotation for your wedding/celebration package, to secure your dates, you should within 7 days of the date of our quotation pay a non-refundable deposit of 33% of your hire charge. The balance will fall due 90 days prior to your stay with us. Should your wedding date be less than 90 days from the date of booking the full balance will be due. You should include a copy of your wedding/celebration insurance documents if you have secured this, if not, we require a copy of this within 30 days of the confirmed booking. Payments can be made by Visa, Mastercard debit or credit cards or bank transfer. A £1250.00 good housekeeping security deposit will be required 14 days prior to your arrival at Alexander House, and will be returned within 14 days, subject to there being no damage to the property or grounds. Please see Main House Self Catering Terms which will also apply to Intimate Wedding stays. Maximum guests 24 adults, 4 children.

Please note that your deposit will not be refunded if you subsequently cancel a confirmed booking, as explained in paragraph 25 below. A contract is only formed between you and us when the deposit payment has been received. No booking application shall be binding on us and no contract shall be formed unless and until we send your booking confirmation. Payment of your deposit confirms that you are accepting our Terms & conditions.

YOUR WEDDING PACKAGE

6. The general content of your wedding/celebration package shall be as set out in your booking email quotation, or as otherwise subsequently agreed with us in writing. We may finalise certain details of your wedding/celebration package (for example, the exact numbers of guests) with you in the period leading up to your wedding, in accordance with these terms. No more than 30 adults, and the specified number of children, may stay in the accommodation onsite, which includes the main house and all our glamping, without express agreement, in writing, and as part of your wedding package. Access times to the property will be specified in your booking confirmation. Access for decorating and tidying up in the Orangery is always between 10am and 5pm, with access for the day prior to the wedding for decorating. Additional days prior to & after the wedding may be requested if your theme requires additional time to be installed. All suppliers must have suitable insurances.

Once a package has been booked, it is only possible to upgrade the package booked, not downgrade the package booked. I.e. if an Intimate Package is booked, then it may upgrade to Classic or Grand, but not downgraded to a DIY intimate wedding, or if a Grand package is booked it may not be downgraded to an Intimate package after booking.

7. As part of your wedding/celebration package, you may have exclusive use of the house and grounds within Alexander House, Duchally Road, Auchterarder, PH3 1PW, depending on the package booked. Please ensure that if you require exclusive use you have booked the correct package. Noise must be kept at Noise Rating 35 (equivalent to a hotel) between 7am and 11.30pm and Noise Rating 20 (normal night time residential restrictions) between 11.30pm and 7am. Noise proved to be above this level will result in full loss of your rental deposit, and will be distributed to our nearest neighbours for the inconvenience caused to them. From 11.30pm it is expected that the music level will be dropped to the correct background music level, and guests will start to depart the property. By midnight, all day guests must have departed the property, and only those staying onsite may remain in their own respective properties. Therefore house guests must retire to the main house, glamping guests to their own respective properties onsite. If windspeeds are over 45mph glamping guests will need to find alternative accommodation, due to the nature of the structures and our insurances.  Please ensure that you have suitable insurances in place should this be required.

8. If your wedding/celebration date is scheduled more than 1 year after the date of our confirmation of booking, we reserve the right to increase the price of your wedding package by up to Retail Price Index for each complete period of 12 months between these two dates.

9. All prices are subject to VAT, prices given include VAT.

PAYMENT OF BALANCE

10. Orangery Wedding – We will invoice you in three separate invoices, your deposit invoice, then 12 months prior to your wedding date, and 6 months prior to your wedding date. You must pay our invoice in full by the due date. Late payments will be charged an administration fee. Payments will be automatically taken using the card you have stored on our payment system. If you wish to pay by an alternative card then please use the payment link that will be sent to you 2 weeks prior to the balance falling due. If you have asked your guests to contribute to your wedding package by paying for their own accommodation in our bespoke Couples Area, any payments taken through this area will be deducted from either your interim or final balance, depending on when the payments are taken.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

11. It is your responsibility to book the Registrar/Celebrant for your wedding.

12. You must confirm final numbers no later than 1 month prior to the wedding.

13. You must provide us with a copy of suitable wedding insurance documents relating to your wedding, within 30 days of booking with us.

14. You must book all required suppliers for your event, except where specifically booked on your behalf, by Alexander House, and such suppliers must be agreed in advance of the Event. Agreement is by no means guaranteed, unless they are already on our agreed suppliers list, and sight of suitable public liability insurance is required 6 weeks prior to your wedding/celebration date. We reserve the right to refuse suppliers we deem unsuitable for the venue or its environs.

Fireworks, and Chinese Lanterns are expressly forbidden at all times at Alexander House, due to the nature of the location. Fire pits may only be used when it is deemed safe by the Alexander House staff, and can be booked with us. DIY Firepits are expressly forbidden. Only natural types of confetti may be used at the venue (bubbles, rice, rose petals), paper confetti is expressly forbidden.

Our Bar Provider must be used for your drinks, who will provide a card only bar, cash is not accepted onsite, and our Catering Partner should be used for your catering. However in exceptional circumstances, 3rd Party Caterers are accepted at Alexander House, however must agree to a specific set of rules that apply to all caterers and suppliers at Alexander House, without their written agreement we cannot allow them access to Alexander House, and cannot be held responsible for any losses you may suffer. Should they break the terms of these rules, we reserve the right to ask them to leave immediately.

15. You must comply with, and use your reasonable endeavours to ensure that your guests comply with, all of our reasonable instructions intended to ensure the safety of property and/or people at the venue.

16. You must provide your guests with such information we may reasonably request regarding arrangements to be followed at the venue (for example, in relation to car parking or the storage of valuables).

17. Any damage caused to the Venue, its equipment, contents or fittings will be invoiced directly to the couple immediately after the event.

18. We reserve the right to stop any activity which we reasonably believe is likely to cause damage to the interior or exterior of the venue or to risk the safety of people at the venue, and we will not tolerate any abusive behaviour by guests to any other guests or member of staff. We reserve the right to remove any persons acting inappropriately from the event.

19. If you include any images of the venue on your wedding/celebration invitations, you must ensure that you have the permission of the appropriate copyright holder.

20. Details of third party suppliers we provide to you are intended to help you in arranging other services to be provided in connection with your wedding. If you do engage these or any other third party suppliers, we accept no responsibility for their performance of services and you should take up any complaints with them directly. You are also responsible for paying their charges directly. We reserve the right not to allow into the venue any third party suppliers who do not meet our requirements intended to ensure the safety and welfare of property and people at the venue.

CANCELLATION BY YOU

21. If you want to cancel a confirmed booking, you must do so in writing and the provisions in paragraph 22 shall apply.

22. We will use reasonable endeavours to “re-sell” the date. However, you must pay us any losses and costs we suffer because of the cancellation which were reasonably foreseeable to both you and us when the contract was entered into, whether or not we are able to resell the date. Depending on when you cancel, the cancellation charges you must pay shall be determined by reference to the table below. We will tell you the exact cancellation charges once we know whether or not we have been able to resell the date, and you must pay the charges within 20 working days of our invoice. Where the final price has yet to be finalised (for example, because you have not yet confirmed catering numbers), we shall base the cancellation charges on any minimum numbers set out in our quotation. Length of time before your scheduled wedding/celebration day Cancellation Charge.

• More than 12 months amount of your deposit (ie non-refundable in all cases)
• Between 12 – 6 months Up to 75% of the wedding package price
• Less than 6 months 100% of the wedding package price

23. COVID 19. Any bookings that cannot then be taken due to a government decreed lockdown will be able to request a date change within 12 months of the booking date, or a refund if no suitable date can be found.

CANCELLATION BY US

24. We reserve the right to cancel your booking without liability to you and without any obligation to refund your deposit if:

(a) you do not pay us the balance of your wedding package price by the date due for such payment; or

(b) we have reasonable grounds to believe that you may not pay us the balance of your wedding package price by the due date and we have requested you to explain the position and you have not done so satisfactorily; or

(c) we discover, before you have paid the balance of your wedding/celebration package price, that you have deliberately concealed information, or deliberately given us incorrect information, about your intended wedding in circumstances where (if you had not done so) it would have been reasonably foreseeable that we would not have accepted your booking; or

(d) we have reasonable grounds to believe that your behaviour or that of your guests at the wedding/celebration is likely to result in  damage to the venue or to our property and/or injury to people.

If we cancel your booking under paragraph 27, you must pay us any losses and costs we suffer because of the cancellation which were reasonably foreseeable to both you and us when the contract was entered into, whether or not we are able to resell the date. Depending on when we cancel, the cancellation charges you must pay will be determined by reference to the table set out under paragraph 25 above.

EVENTS OUTSIDE OUR CONTROL

25. We shall not be liable or responsible for any failure to perform, or delay in performance of, any of our obligations under our contract with you that is caused by events outside our  reasonable control (such as serious damage to the venue, serious adverse weather conditions, a pandemic or epidemic, or interruption or failure of utility services such as electric power, gas or water). In these circumstances, we shall use every effort to notify you as soon as is reasonably practical. If, as a result of such events, we believe we have no alternative but to cancel your booking, you must have suitable wedding insurance to cover you for these eventualities.

25a. Should there be a notified power outage, notified to us by the Energy Network Provider, you will be given the option to hire a generator to be able to continue with your wedding event as scheduled, or we will offer you to move the date to within 6 months of the wedding date. In the event of an unscheduled power cut during your event clause 25 will apply, although we will endeavour to provide you with water, battery operated candles and portable speaker for up to 2 hours to allow for some time for the power to be restored.

LIMITATION OF OUR LIABILITY TO YOU

26. Our total liability to you for any loss you suffer will be limited to the total amount of money paid to us for your wedding/celebration package. We will not be liable for any losses which were not reasonably foreseeable to both you and us when the contract was entered into or for any losses that were not caused by any breach of contract or breach of statutory duty or negligence on our part.

27. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits in any way our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other matter for which it would be illegal or unlawful for us to exclude or limit (or attempt to exclude or limit) our liability.

CHANGES TO THE VENUE AND/OR YOUR WEDDING PACKAGE

28. We reserve the right to make changes to the interior and/or exterior of the venue between the time we accept your booking and the date of your wedding, and we cannot guarantee that the venue and its surrounds will be free from additional structures (such as marquees or scaffolding).

29. We will use all reasonable endeavours to ensure that no components of your wedding/celebration have to be altered. However, as a wedding plan is normally put together a long time before your scheduled date, we reserve the right to make changes to certain components if this is necessary to comply with safety requirements or other changes in law or relevant codes of practice, or to make other minor changes which we reasonably believe will not be to the detriment of your overall wedding experience.

30. We will notify you of any significant changes as soon as practically possible, but unless the change is one which is likely to fundamentally change the nature of your wedding experience we will not offer a refund, costs or compensation.

GENERAL

31. If only one person is making the wedding/celebration booking, that person confirms that s/he has the authority to make the booking on behalf of both persons intending to be married. Our contract will therefore be with both such persons. By paying your deposit you are agreeing to the terms set out in this Contract.

32. Any error or omission in any information or document issued by us shall be subject to correction provided that the correction does not materially affect the contract.

33. You may not transfer any of your rights or obligations under our contract with you to another person without our prior written consent, which we will not withhold unreasonably. We can transfer all or any of our rights and obligations under the contract to another organisation, but this will not affect your rights under these terms.

34. If any court or competent authority decides that any of the provisions of these terms are invalid, unlawful or unenforceable to any extent, the term will, to that extent only, be severed from the remaining terms, which will continue to be valid to the fullest extent permitted by law.

35. No person who is not a party to our contract with you shall have any rights under or in connection with it.

36. All written communications by you to us must be sent by first class post to Alexander House, Auchterarder, Perthshire, PH31PW or to housemanager@alexanderhousescotland.com. We may send written communications to you at either the e mail or postal address set out in our quotation.