VW camper van hire northampton

Time for VW hibernation!

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For Pear Tree Weddings it is nearly the end of the 2014 VW wedding season – we will review the year in full over the next few weeks, but for now it’s time to look forward to the next few days & the last few winter weddings.

snow

Daphne, Flossy, Basil and Wilma (and Bruce!)  are now all tucked up tightly in their garages & barns taking it easy for a few weeks and enjoying a well earned rest before we start the servicing, detailing and titivating the wedding campervans and beetle ready for the 2015 VW wedding season….in fact today we’ll be making new curtains for Daphne – so although weddings may be slowing, the work for us just changes…..from managing weddings to enhancing & loving our gorgeous show room condition wedding VW fleet!

Over the next few days Wilson and Morris will be attending three weddings, and then they too can have a well deserved break. (Although Wilson is having new flooring and curtains – so he wont rest for  too long!).

So, other companies drive their VWs throughout the winter – why don’t we?  Well here at Pear Tree Weddings we recognise that:

– The VWs dont have ABS brakes or power steering & with the potential of icy roads we just don’t think they’re safe enough for wedding passengers
– The VWs do not like salty roads – wet salty roads are the last thing these VWs need – salt can play havoc with the paint work & under side of the vans & beetle!
– The VWs don’t have the most efficient heating – we really don’t want a shivering bride on her big day!
– ………and most importantly for us – we want a couple of months to work on our award winning fleet to ensure they are in absolutely perfect condition for the 2015 wedding season.

VW Wedding Season slows…..

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So here we are on the 5th November and we are wondering what to do this Saturday!  Although we have weddings on Friday, as the wedding season starts to slow down, we have ring-fenced a Saturday & Sunday off!!! YIIPPEEE!!!!

Here at Pear Tree Weddings we run our wedding season from March when the daffodils start to peep through until the beginning of December when the Christmas tree goes up……we know lots of you get married during the winter months, however we believe our VWs need a rest…..and if i’m quite honest, so do we!

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The vintage and classic wedding VWs don’t have power steering, and they don’t have ABS braking systems….which we think are quite essential for winter road driving, but even more importantly maybe for you, they don’t have efficient heating!!!  We also don’t want the VW wedding fleet suffering from ice and salt – all in all we’d prefer them tucked up in hibernation for the deep winter months.

As for the Pear Tree team?  We’ll be working hard – we’ll be renovating & titivating the VW campervans and VW Beetle, servicing and pampering them too.  In the office we’ll be planning the several hundred weddings we already have on the books for 2015, as well as taking lots of new bookings.

As for this weekend, well, after Fridays weddings have finished the Pear Tree Family will be driving off in to the sunset for a weekend break – enjoying out first Saturday lie in for over 9 months….can’t wait!

Pear Tree Weddings?

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Ok, so what do Pear Trees have to do with weddings? So many people over the years have told us what a gorgeous name our company has…… but few people know Pear Tree Weddings comes from the home of our vintage and classic VW wedding fleet….Pear Tree Cottage!  We have numerous pear trees in the garden, and more senior neighbours have told us stories of how, as children, they used to climb the cottage garden wall to steal pears on the way to school!  When we first started our business our logo was of Flossy and a pear tree, we even had leaf inspired font!

pears  door  pear tree old logo

Wilma is a lucky girl, she sleeps snuggled up in the toasty warm garage, whilst Flossy (our 1972 white bay window campervan) Daphne (our 1964 split window vintage green camper) and Bruce (our mad VW beach buggy) are covered in a protective weather proof ‘duvet’ – and sit on the drive way at Pear Tree Cottage.  These members of the fleet have tip top security, with not only ram proof locked barriers but also CCTV watching every minute of every day to ensure that they are safe & happy!  The rest of the fleet; Morris (our 1958 vintage two tone cream split screen VW), Wilson (our 1960 two tone cream split screen van) and Basil (our 1963 vintage green and cream luxurious wedding campervan) are all together in a rather fabulous local farm barn, set in the middle of Northamptonshire’s finest countryside, what a view they wake up to every day!

Having started Pear Tree Weddings quite some years ago now, we have been lucky enough to not only receive loads of VW campervan gifts, but we’ve also been inundated with Pear gifts too! Thank you to all those who have sent them in, they are pride of place in the new Pear Tree Weddings Head Office Shed!

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PTW VW Head Office!

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Well, Pear Tree Weddings, Classic & Vintage VW wedding hire, has grown considerably over the last few years – thanks to the winning combination of stunning show room condition VWs and brilliant customer service.  Those of you who work closely with us will know that we’ve taken on new office staff recently to help manage each and every wedding, maintaining our intricate attention to detail for every need – being just about the largest privately owned VW wedding hire company in the UK doesn’t mean we have to loose what’s important to us…..and that is you – the couple getting married and your personal individual requirements for your VW wedding!

So…….HOW EXCITING……having started the business on the kitchen table, then taken over half the children’s playroom, then the whole of their play room……we are simply delighted & overwhelmed to have moved this week into a purpose built ‘shed’ office! YYYIIPPPPEEEEE!

   shed women cave  shed door

In the ground of Pear Tree Cottage, we now have a ‘shed’ that is our Pear Tree Weddings Head Office!  It is simply awesome….and somewhat inspired by one of our brides from 2012 we are entering our working shed in to Shed of the Year Competition 2015, so we may call on you all to vote for us at some point!

shed desk   shed beam 2  shed curtains

So this is where the team plan your wedding!  It’s a really inspiring environment, full of VWs, weddingy bits & pieces & of course littered with Thank You cards & letters!

shed ribbons  shed filing

And coming soon….the outside is having some rather exciting paint work…..we’ll share that soon!

How many people can you fit in a VW?

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Well – 27 people can be crammed into a classic mini…..so no doubt you can get hundreds in to a VW campervan??? Wrong……

By law we can only transport a maximum of 8 people in to a VW campervan – after this we would require a mini-bus license. So, yes, we can take 7……but we don’t advise it!

We want you to be comfortable during your VW journey, we want it to be enjoyable and we don’t want you feeling squished in – the maximum number of passengers we recommend is 6…..BUT even that depends on the size of the people, the dresses & the hats!!!

daphne leo  wilson & chaps  bridesmaidsdaphne 22 march

We tend to have up to 5 passengers in the back seats – our seats have the advantage of facing each other, some wedding campers have the curved bench seats which inevitably means knees can bump, and the person on the curve can get squashed.  In the split screen campers each bench seat is 1m 50cm wide, with the opposite seat 1m 20cm wide….one seat is shorter as the built in Champagne units take up some space.  Except Basil – he has two 1m50cm seats as his Champagne unit has been hand crafted to the rear of the back seat (very clever!).  We can take one passenger up front with the chauffeur – but since the handbrake and gear stick are positioned central to the van in the front we don’t like two passengers up front otherwise the poor chauffeurs has to lean across one of your guests just to change gear!

S flossy bridesmaids silver morris bride & groom petrol bridesmaids

So work it out for yourselves – we think the more space the better, so if you are less than 3miles from your ceremony venue, why not let us do two trips – giving you the maximum comfort a VW can offer.

 

Behind the scenes – VW photoshoot!

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As soon as Morris came on board we had a huge amount of interest in him – being the oldest bespoke wedding VW in the UK he drew an awful lot of attention……so we held a photo shoot so that we could share some amazing images of him, alongside Wilma the VW wedding Beetle.

morris photoshoot wilma photoshoot    wilma flowers

The Pear Tree Team went to Plum Park Hotel, Towcester for a fabulous & fun day with Ravinder Crone, an award winning and published lifestyle, portrait and wedding photographer.  We borrowed some incredible dresses from A Brides World in Northampton and the most gorgeous page boy outfit from Suitors in Buckingham……with simply stunning flowers from Emma at Signature Flowers, Quainton.

So, Ravinder Crone produced some incredible images of the VWs…..but the pictures we loved ?  The behind the scenes shots…..when the models didn’t realise the camera was still snapping away….. when it started raining and the models huddled together on the bench…… the page boy running around handing out snacks from his box of flapjacks!

models rain    chops flapjack

But the very best shots of the day….well of course we are a little bias……surely the beautiful bridesmaid & page boy……a.k.a. Little Miss & Master Pear Tree!

bag camera chops glassbag chops plum chops & bag