April 23 2010.

WEATHER OBSESSION
As you may guess marquee contractors are weather obsessed, so here is an update on 2010 for you. After a very cold winter and the wettest Feburary in 10 years, we had fairly average rainfall in March. Virtually no rain in April so far. The April average for the last 10 years is about 50mm; thats a lot of rain to come in the last few days if we are to hit the average, though in 07 we only had about 3mm all April.
Actually this has led to some problems. For example the ground was so waterlogged on one local site even after half of April with no rain, that we had to erect a wedding marquee for the weekend of 17th April at an alternative site. All went well however (link to thank you letter), and brilliant weather on the day.
MARQUEE MATTERS. The new season is very much underway. Our cleaning & maintenance has gone according to schedule and should complete before the end of next week just in time for the busy period to really get going.
Bookings continue to come in, though our last minute modern world means that many are coming in later & later! PLEASE MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR EVERYONE. If you are planning to get married, it is a good idea to book your marquee at the same time as you book the church or registry office, and in any case at least 6 months in advance. That way you should be able to get exactly what you want. Our shortest lead time from first contact to event date last year was 1 day (not a wedding thankfully). Whilst if we have stock, vehicle and manpower availability, we will always try to help, you are taking a big risk if you order late - we are already fully booked for many weekends this summer, and sure lots of other marquee companies will be in the same position.

January update. Computer & software upgrades started.

Long awaited upgrades are now underway with only minor glitches. Also orders for new hire stock for the coming season and a new van have been placed, so it is spend spend spend! Not a good time with VAT due at the end of the month. At least last quarter was only at 15%!

Things are booking up well for the summer, but please keep the orders coming in everyone. Alistair and Gordon are depending on us to pull the country out of recession!

The new vehicle is slightly sad news as we will be saying farewell to our good old P reg Renault Master Van. She's been with us since new, and until last year when she had to have a new clutch and water pump, was hardly ever off the road. Another old workhorse condemned by the governments scrappage scheme.

On a happier note, this years photo prize winner (above photo) has had the champagne delivered. Any of you champagne houses out there can get your name all over this blog & our website if you give us a really good deal on a case for next year!

Whiteout

Blogging practise today as not much is happening apart from the snow. We have been told by our search engine optimisers that having a blog is a good idea, and if you have one you should post new blogs regularly.

Apparently Google (just trying out hyperlink skills) will like us more and push our website up a bit (currently bottom of page 3 or worse for our preferred searches). We know lots of people who would like to use us are finding it difficult to locate our site so this is important. Perhaps we will have an improvement to report here on our next blog.

Surrey seems to have ground to a halt this morning. The overnight snow is 3" deep, on top of what remained from earlier. Small flakes are still falling. The good news is we have all got into work, in spite of the absence of gritters, so business as usual.

Claremont Marquees Photo Prize

The Claremont Marquees 2009 photo prize was awarded on 8th January. Most of the submissions were wedding marquee photos; the rest were party marquees. The standard of entries was fantastic! Any one of the photos submitted could have been a worthy winner and there was much debate over the final result.

The winning entrant has been notified and will shortly receive a case of champagne. Click here for the winning photo and a selection of other entries.

Our thanks to everyone who entered photos. It really is a privilege for to see how wonderful you make our marquees look. It is also a great help to us and future clients when trying to decide on the best look for an event.

Little else happens in January so we are concentrating on cleaning (click here for photo), maintenance and PAT testing electrical equipment for the rest of the month.