Rusticandruralweddings 

WE HAVE SINCE DISCOVERED THIS IS A SCAM COMPANY. DUNCAN BAVISTER IS WANTED FOR FRAUD, DECEPTION AND THEFT. HE IS KNOWN TO HAVE ABUSED WOMEN AND MANIPULATED MANY COUPLES INTO PAYING DEPOSITS INTO A FAKE COMPANY WHICH HE HAS LISTED TO BE STRUCK OFF.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: We chose to go with Rustic & Rural Weddings as we liked the idea of a more informal outdoor tipi wedding. Rustic & Rural Weddings were at that point newly listed on hitched.com (no longer now though) and their website depicted our ideal wedding. Unfortunately, it’s now obvious that all the photos were images from a previous venture run by his ex-wife. My fiancé was communicating with a woman called Charlotte at the time, but when it came to our first Zoom call only Duncan Bavister was present (no real explanation as to why Charlotte wasn’t there – we assumed she was busy that evening but it later became clear she had left the company). During the call Duncan spoke about the hundreds of weddings he’d run in the past (we assumed outdoor ones) but it later became clear these were weddings he was running in a castle with his now ex-wife. We were unknowingly very much the guinea pigs for his new ‘rustic and rural’ solo endeavour.

The year prepping with Duncan was chaotic. Calls were consistently rescheduled or missed entirely. Emails with details/photos were constantly promised but never sent. Living in London it wasn’t easy for us to make trips to Yorkshire to visit, but on the occasions we did - to visit potential sites for the wedding, the warehouse to view the décor, or the caterer to do the food tasting - Duncan had a last minute reason why none of this was possible. We have since found out this is because HE DOES NOT OWN THE TIPEES and has not paid the company he hires them from and THERE WAS NO CATERER.

For this reason we gave up trying to find a site and opted to do it on his land (just to make it as easy as possible) but two days before the wedding Duncan informed us that we’d have to move the site down the road as the tents were too big for the original plot. It was very confusing for guests on the day who were looking for ‘the old barn’ as stated on the invitation, and caused us a lot of additional stress. I am aware that a couple of guests were late because of this as they went to the wrong place.

Duncan has already admitted to us that the catering “was wrong” - nothing like what we had previously tasted. we've since found out that Duncan was preparing the food at his house himself, and reheating on camp stoves at the wedding. THERE WAS NO CATERER. Food was served two hours late and completely cold. I couldn’t really stomach mine and I know others felt similarly.

One table, which happened to have my grandma seated at it, was completely forgotten and was served their food during my speech about an hour later than everyone else and one child never received her meal.
Other issues:
• We also only had one round of toasting drinks, despite our package being for two;
• There was no card machine at the bar;
• The alcohol was running low even before the meal was over;
• Pints cost £6 and a double mixer cost £10. This is pretty steep considering Duncan had promised “Yorkshire prices” - I know that guests felt ripped off, which was embarrassing.
• No football table or fancy-dress closet in the bar, which we’d spoken to Duncan about in the week leading up;
• no TV/DVD player in the kids’ tent, which Duncan had said was definitely happening and mentioned the Disney DVDs a staff member had bought;
• no sweets table or wedding favours in the toilet which we’d previously spoken to Duncan about (we would’ve brought these ourselves had we’d known it was an issue);
• A member of the band informed us that a big reason why the band (beyond the food delays) were so late to get on was that there was no stage set up as they had agreed with Duncan. This was hugely disappointing as Duncan had repeatedly assured us of his team’s AV skills and equipment;
• Because of all the delays we had to pay our photographer overtime, which was an additional unexpected expense for us (and again very embarrassing).

Following the wedding, after a month of ignoring us, Duncan finally offered a full refund for the catering but, a month following this, no refund has been received due to a variety of highly suspect “reasons” – e.g. account being restricted, new account being set up, and now no longer able to log onto this bank account. In a final desperate measure Duncan even offered to meet me in London to hand me the money in cash, but this meeting never transpired, and he is conveniently no longer contactable by phone.

We now realise that nothing Duncan says can be trusted. He appears to be completely deluded as to his ability to run a business, constantly making promises which are almost immediately broken -and we would not wish this very stressful experience on anyone.