Last night took us up into the Cotswolds for a wedding at Old Gore Barn, the Cripps & Co barn at Fosse Cross near Cirencester. A Wednesday, in the middle of a record-breaking June heatwave - not the obvious recipe for a packed dancefloor, and the room proved every doubt wrong.
Dancing through the heatwave
The whole country has been baking this week. Today is the hottest June day on record, and last night wasn’t far behind it - the kind of evening where the air doesn’t cool down much after the sun drops. A hot barn full of people in their wedding best could have been a flat one. It wasn’t. Guests stepped out for air between songs and came straight back in, and the floor stayed full while we played. When a crowd wants to dance, a bit of heat doesn’t stop them; it just means everyone earns the bar.
The venue helped, in a way that suited the conditions. The sound system here is built to reach the whole place rather than just the dancefloor, so when guests slipped off to cool down the night went with them and pulled them back. If you want the detail on how Old Gore is set up for a band, it is all on the Old Gore Barn venue page - this is just what it meant on a sweltering Wednesday.
The tiramisu, the flowers and At Last
The barn carried its daytime dressing through into the evening, and some of it ended up on our stage - our drummer spent the night flanked by two massive vertical flower arrangements that had been a feature earlier in the day. Best-dressed drum riser we have had in a while.
Instead of a cake, the couple cut an enormous tiramisu, with proper ceremony, right before the first dance. Their first dance was “At Last”, the Etta James classic - about as timeless as a first dance gets, and a lovely way to lift the room into the evening.
A midweek wedding works
The bride and groom slipped away around half past ten, a touch earlier than a Saturday crowd might - this was a Wednesday, and a fair few guests had work in the morning. That is the one honest trade-off with a midweek wedding, and it is worth planning your evening timeline around it rather than against it. Land your big moments - first dance, the parents up, the full-floor singalong - earlier in the night, and you get the same party in a slightly tighter window. Everyone here did exactly that, and nobody left feeling short-changed. Midweek weddings come with real upsides too: better venue availability, often a better rate, and a guest list that turns up genuinely pleased to have a Wednesday like this one.
A great team on the day
Old Gore is a proper Cotswold barn and a genuinely friendly team to work with. If you are planning a wedding there, our Old Gore Barn venue page covers the setup in detail, and the Gloucestershire wedding band page has the wider Cotswolds picture.
Congratulations to the happy couple - a brilliant night, heat and all.
The Brotherhood are South Wales’ premier wedding and corporate band, playing barns and country houses across Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds. Get in touch to check our availability for your date.
