If your idea of a wedding venue is a country house with a lawn, this is not it, and that is the entire point. The Memo is a miners’ institute in a valleys town, restored back to its 1920s art deco, and a wedding here looks like nothing else in South Wales.
Walking down the aisle in a 1920s theatre
The thing that sets the Memo apart is that the ceremony can happen in the auditorium - a 446-seat art deco theatre, red velvet, raked seating, the aisle running down through the middle of it. You get married on a stage in front of your guests rather than at the end of a function room.
It is a genuinely unusual setup and it suits some couples enormously and others not at all. If you want intimate and rustic, this is the wrong building. If you like the idea of a bit of theatre, of your guests seated in a proper auditorium watching, it is hard to beat anywhere in Wales at the price.
The building was paid for by miners’ subscriptions, opened in 1908 with the Memorial Hall added in 1924, and was nearly lost after the pits closed before a BBC Restoration appearance and lottery funding brought it back. It is Grade II listed. Plenty of couples marrying here have grandparents who drank or danced in it.
The Ballroom for the reception
The reception moves to the Ballroom - around 120 to 130 seated for a wedding breakfast, up to 200 standing in the evening, with a licensed bar and a commercial kitchen next door for caterers.
It has a sprung dance floor, which is not a detail to skim past. Most wedding receptions are held on concrete under carpet and you can see it in people’s faces by half eleven. A sprung floor is easier to dance on for hours, and rooms like this were built for exactly that.
The move between the two rooms also gives your day a natural break. Ceremony in the theatre, drinks and photographs while the Ballroom is turned around, then everyone back in for the meal and the evening. Venues where all of that happens in one room have to do the same turnaround with your guests standing in a corridor.
How we set up here
Weddings here work best for us at five to eight pieces. The Ballroom takes a bigger band comfortably, but for a wedding party of this size a six-piece with keys is usually the sweet spot - full enough to fill the room, not so big that the band starts eating into the dance floor.
We run in-ear monitors instead of floor wedges, so the level in the room is set at the desk rather than by however loud the band needs to be to hear itself. That matters in a room where the front row of dancers ends up close to the band.
Our usual wedding shape is a chilled first set of around 30 minutes taking in the first dance, then two 50-minute dancefloor sets, with playlists running in the gaps. For the ceremony itself, The Apple Tree Theory or a trio works better in the auditorium than a full band - it is a listening room, and it deserves to be treated as one.
We have spent whole days in this room
We film here. The Brotherhood as an eleven-piece, The Sisterhood, and The Apple Tree Theory were all shot in the Ballroom, and there is more from those sessions here. If you want to know how a band actually sounds and looks in this room before you book one, that is a better answer than anything we could write.
Worth asking about
Ballroom hire starts from around £40 plus VAT an hour with package rates available, which puts a Memo wedding well under the cost of a comparable hotel or country house. Check current rates and what is included with the venue directly.
Ask about finish times early. It is a listed building in a residential part of Newbridge, and UK noise rules apply here as everywhere - a late finish is something to agree with the Memo rather than assume.
The same building also hosts milestone birthdays and private parties, and we have written about playing parties here separately.
Getting there
Newbridge is on the A467 between Newport and Blackwood, about twenty minutes from our base in Newport and forty from Cardiff. Newbridge station is on the Ebbw Valley line with direct services to both, which is useful for guests who would rather not drive. Accommodation is limited in the town itself, so point guests towards Newport or Blackwood early.
The Brotherhood are a South Wales wedding band based in Newport, and Newbridge is twenty minutes up the road from us. Check availability or read more about weddings across South Wales.