PERTH MANOR:
Wow in a wedding capital
An imposing porte-cochère where guests alight. Spectacular rooms, including a dining room clad in 1920s William Morris tapestries and furnished with a baby grand piano. A sweeping staircase that’s a perfect backdrop for photographs. An enclosed garden with 19th-century apple trees, a fountain and sundial, and space enough for both a wedding ceremony and a tented reception. The feeling you’ve stepped into Downton Abbey, albeit with 21st century comforts.
With features like these, the elegant Perth Manor in eastern Ontario offers a wow factor that even the most demanding bride will find hard to resist.
But for owners Gordon and Linda Craig, that only begins to explain why they host an average of eight to 10 weddings each year at
their 6,000 square foot Italianate inn, built in 1878 and once home to the president of Jergen’s Lotion and Wampole, the pharmaceutical firm. “We can offer them all the event planning,” Linda explains, “in a setting that’s not only competitive but beautiful.” Adds Gordon: “All the couple has to do is crawl upstairs to bed at the end of the evening.”
Weddings aren’t the formula they might once have been, Linda notes. “Now everyone is trying to make their own wedding unique.” The Craigs have helped arrange everything from high tea receptions, where Gordon found himself in the kitchen making 350 fancy sandwiches, to a breakfast wedding, where the 9:30 a.m. service began with the groomsmen entering to Queen’s rock anthem, “We Are the Champions.”
By Peter Johansen