A summer Saturday took us right out to the western end of the Gower, to a marquee pitched above the sand at Oxwich Bay Hotel - the sort of setup where you spend the soundcheck glancing over your shoulder at the sea. We went down as a 5-piece for the day, in for a 17:30 setup, with the tide running out across the bay behind the dancefloor.
Playing with the sea behind you
We set up on the flat floor right next to the dancefloor - no stage, the open side of the marquee looking straight out over the water. There aren’t many rooms where the view does this much before you’ve struck a note. The tide ran out across the bay all through the chilled first set, and the light went long and gold off the water as the evening came on. You spend half the soundcheck just looking at it.
It’s a working room as well as a beautiful one. There’s no sound limiter at Oxwich, which on a beachfront marquee is a real plus, and we’d come in half expecting to play an electronic kit to keep the noise down - in the end the full acoustic kit was fine. The practical side of playing here, from the two-stage load-in to the lineups that suit the marquee, is all on our Oxwich Bay venue page; this is more the story of the day itself.
An early finish that didn’t matter
The one thing to plan around was the curfew: live music had to stop at 10pm. That pulls the whole evening forward, so the running order ran tighter than usual - the cake was cut around half seven, inside our chilled first set, and the dancefloor sets came straight on rather than waiting for the light to drop.
It sounds like it would take the legs out of the night, and it didn’t. We built the day the way we always do - a relaxed first set with the first dance landed early, then two longer sets blended together to carry the floor through - and the dancefloor was packed right up to the last live song. When we stopped at ten the DJ picked it straight up and ran it to close. Nobody felt short-changed. An early live curfew is a planning detail, not a problem, as long as you start the evening to suit it.
Why the Gower is worth the drive
Oxwich Bay is one of the more distinctive rooms we play - there aren’t many Gower wedding venues where the sea is the backdrop to the first dance. It’s a stay-over wedding by its nature, a long way west of more or less everywhere, the kind of day guests make a weekend of rather than a Saturday night out.
It earns its place on the list of South Wales wedding venues we love - and the blank-canvas appeal of a marquee, where you build the whole day from scratch, is a big part of why.
The Brotherhood are a South Wales wedding band playing marquees, barns and beachfront venues across the Gower and the wider region. Get in touch to check our availability for your date at Oxwich Bay.
