The Gillyflower is the dancefloor room, and it sits behind a wall. Through the wedding breakfast in the main hall it’s a closed door; behind that door we’re already set up, the Funktion One is patched, the lighting rig overhead is warmed and waiting. Speeches end, the doors open, the band walks on. The Gillyflower was built for the music end of the day rather than retrofitted for it.
Elmore Court at a glance
Family home for hundreds of years and now an exclusive-use wedding venue ten minutes west of Gloucester city centre, just off the M5 on a bend of the Severn. The 750-year-old manor handles ceremony, drinks reception and accommodation; the Gillyflower - a purpose-built party hall added to the estate - takes the wedding breakfast and the evening party for anywhere from around 60 up to 200-plus guests. On-site sleeping runs to 16 bedrooms in the main house, a six-bed Coach House and six Elmore Wild treehouse pods, so most of the wedding party stay through the weekend. Hire is fully exclusive across the whole estate. Address is Elmore, Gloucestershire, GL2 3NT. Of the Gloucestershire venues we reach over the Severn from our home patch in South Wales, it’s one of the few we’re back at season after season.
Setting up at Elmore Court
The Gillyflower has a built-in stage on a raised riser at one end of the hall, with a suppliers’ entrance that comes in at the side of the stage - the car park sits right outside it. It’s a load-in we could do with our eyes shut by now: pull up, wheel the gear straight onto the stage, and the rest of the wedding never sees any of it. Because the dancefloor room is structurally separate from the wedding-breakfast room with a solid partition between, we set up in full through speeches and dinner without bleeding any noise into the meal. When the doors open at the evening turn, the changeover is one beat rather than twenty minutes of rolling flightcases past tables.
The stage is generous - a 9-piece fits with room to spare, and a 5 or 6-piece sits inside it comfortably with the dancefloor unencumbered in front. Power on the stage end is built for live entertainment: separate, properly-sized feeds for the band and the DJ rig. The DJ runs through and beyond our last note without anyone unplugging anything, and we break down at our own pace.
Audio is the installed Funktion One front-of-house, one of the best venue PAs we play through. A pair of large subs and full-size tops at the band end carry the low end, and six smaller F101s ring the dancefloor from the circular truss overhead, pointing straight down at the floor. The result is even coverage across the whole hall instead of a loud patch in front of the stage. The house lighting on that same truss is a serious rig too: six Chauvet Intimidator moving heads, a large revolving mirror dome and LED strip lighting around the room, so the dancefloor is already dressed before we add anything of our own. The whole hall is insulated with straw-bale walls, so the room contains itself - there’s no fixed dB limiter on the wall, and the venue runs an unfussy approach to volume because the building already does the neighbours-and-bedrooms job for you. We bring our own on-stage rig, run in-ears throughout, and feed a stereo mix into the house Funktion One.
Recommended band size at Elmore Court
The Gillyflower is built for live music, so it takes a full band cleanly. The 5-piece or 6-piece Brotherhood is the sweet spot for most couples - two vocals, guitar, bass and drums with keys at five, plus sax or another vocal at six. If you want more weight in the room and the budget runs to it, the 8-piece with brass works here as well as anywhere we play - the room and the PA both have the headroom to take it without compressing the mix.
How a wedding day flows at Elmore Court
Most couples take the whole estate for the weekend, so the timeline is unhurried. Ceremony in the licensed spaces around the house and grounds, drinks across the gardens and out by the Severn, then through to the Gillyflower for the wedding breakfast. The partition between the breakfast and the dancefloor room means the band is rigged and line-checked before speeches even start - no scramble between dessert and first dance.
We open with a half-hour that leans reggae and holds your first dance, then two fifty-minute sets arranged our own way. DJ playlists fill the gaps and run on after we finish. There’s no fixed curfew at Elmore but we’d typically wrap the live music around midnight; the separated DJ feed means recorded music can keep the floor moving for as long as the couple want it. The venue team are a pleasure to work with on the day - by now it’s a hello rather than an introduction - and they tend to give the band a room out the back to base in, which is rare.
Using the partition wall and the DJ feed
The partition wall only pays off if the schedule uses it. Keep the load-in slot through the wedding breakfast and the band sets up properly instead of rushing a changeover, so nail the timeline with the venue at planning stage rather than leaving it open. The other thing couples often under-use is the separated band-and-DJ power: if you’ve booked a DJ alongside us, briefing them that they can run continuously through the band’s pack-down keeps the floor from emptying while we’re clearing the stage.
The Brotherhood are South Wales’ premier wedding band. More on what we do as a Gloucestershire wedding band, or check our availability for your date at Elmore Court.
