As we come to the end of a very busy summer of 45 wedding music performances for the string quartet, string trio and string duo we thought it would be nice to do a little series of wedding blog posts on the top London wedding venues we play at most often!

First in our series has to be the wedding venue in Richmond Park Pembroke Lodge as Niche London String Quartet played wedding music there 7 times this Summer providing quartet music for ceremonies, wedding receptions and the breakfast – In July it felt like our second home and what a home to enjoy!

There are 2 parts of Pembroke Lodge where you can have your wedding, either the more intimate setting of the upstairs rooms of The Russell Suite, also enjoying the lawns to the side, or The Belvedere, getting to enjoy the wonderful views of the terrace for your wedding reception.

We tend to recommend Niche London String Trio or String Duo for weddings in The Russell Suite and we usually play for wedding in The Belvedere as a string trio and string quartet. This year our brides and grooms had wonderful summer wedding weather and we played outside on the terrace for every wedding reception!

Every one of Niche’s weddings at Pembroke Lodge has been unique, with the individual stylings and decorations being complimented by Niche Quartet playing the bride and groom’s perfect soundtrack throughout the wedding. The string quartet wedding musicians played purely Disney music for one wedding ceremony and reception, another glamourous bride really loved to hear the Game of Thrones theme tune before she made her entrance,  a Niche groom ran to us to say our performance was more than he ever could have imagined when the string quartet played his special request Por Una Cabeza during his wedding reception – We do love seeing our couples and their guests enjoying our music!!

We visited Pembroke in the last Thursday for a wedding ceremony where the guests sung along to us playing Mr Brightside for the newlywed’s exit and our next performance is booked for October and per usual we can’t wait!

Niche London String Quartet has been so busy these past 3 months, not only playing for weddings, parties and the hugely exciting NHS Awards Ceremony (More on that below!) but also preparing for a big list of spring and summer booking by writing and rehearsing all the new music requests!

At the end of February Niche – The London String Quartet travelled to the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to provide the London entertainment for the NHS Awards and the NHS Leadership Academy. For this evening the string quartet were providing our special amplified musical performance for corporate entertainment and were plugged into the ballroom room holding the champagne reception and the gorgeous star filled hall for dinner so the whole venue was filled with music and an atmosphere of anticipation from the very beginning.  

As more than 500 guests filled the venue they stopped to take photos with Niche London Quartet and also to make some special requests. The mood was electric and Niche Quartet kept the energy going all evening with performances of the latest chart hits and classical favourites. Just before the awards ceremony was due to start, as the string quartet’s big finish, Niche played “We are the Champions” and the excited guests filled the room with applause which set the scene perfectly for the award winners to be announced!

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These past months we have added lots of new modern wedding songs like Bruno Mars ‘Just The Way You Are’, which was written as the special request for Niche String Trio’s performance at Warren House in March. Niche played for 2.5hrs at the intimate and lovely wedding reception on a beautiful sunny day in Surrey. The children and guests were thrilled with the bride’s choice of mainly modern wedding songs with some classical favourites mixed in. By the end of the wedding reception the guests and all the children were dancing away and making requests for their favourite songs to be played. A throughly enjoyable performance for us.

As Niche – The London String Quartet have headed into their Busiest Month Ever we’ve quickly stolen some time to tell you about the wonderful London weddings we performed for in August – they were just too gorgeous and unique to miss out!

Our first wedding of August was in one of the London String Quartet‘s favourite central locations, the stunning and unique wedding venue St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. On our third visit to the St Pancras this year we were to provide wedding music for Ann’s wedding reception and wedding breakfast as Niche String Trio. The wedding reception music was a stylish and classy affair with the newly-weds choosing the expansive and famous Barcarolle as their special wedding music request to accompany the guests’ first entrance into the grand Ladies Smoking Room.

For the Wedding Breakfast we moved on to our fun and exciting modern string quartet repertoire to entertain the seated guests in the Renaissance’s Gallery – it was a hugely successful event with our final song Bittersweet Symphony being requested by the Bride and Niche London String Trio leaving the room to huge rounds of applause!

Here is a what Ann wrote to Niche after the big day: “Just a quick note to say thank you so much for doing an amazing job and making our day go absolutely perfectly!! Everyone was clapping for you, and I missed Bittersweet Symphony while outside of the Gallery for a minute so thank you so much for playing it again for me. We are still receiving compliments about how wonderful you were and it was such an elegant touch to the cocktail hour and dinner. We couldn’t have asked for it to go any better!” Read more testimonials from past Niche clients here.

Niche String Quartet’s next London Wedding was in the grand and historic Hall Place, to provide wedding ceremony music, and entertainment during the drinks reception and wedding breakfast. The ceremony was a gorgeous affair in the tastefully decorated ancient hall with Lorraine making her big entrance to Pachelbel’s Canon (a firm wedding favourite), and the couple being serenaded by romantic 1000 years and All My Life as music for signing the register. The newly weds left the hall to the triumphant traditional Wedding March – the perfect example of how modern and traditional music can be blended together to make unique wedding music when you choose a string quartet for your wedding!

Lorraine and Fred chose Niche London Quartet’s highly unique Niche Jukebox service for their wedding reception and dinner entertainment ensuring that the guests could be involved and thrilled throughout the day! Lorraine and Fred posted their thanks to Niche Quartet on our Facebook Page!

Huge Congratulations to both of the lovely couples – Niche were so happy to be able to make your wedding day perfect!

After a busy May the Bank Holiday weekend was all about sunshine and Wedding Music for Niche – The London String Quartet!

Our first stop was to the prestigious Ham Polo Club in the leafy heart of London and Richmond! We were there to play for Lorna and Mathew’s wedding reception, and as the weather was so lovely we were set up on the terrace overlooking the beautiful polo fields and sights. Lorna and Matthew had lots of favourite modern wedding songs they wanted to hear from our repertoire list, but also making use of Niche London Quartet’s special arrangement service they requested we write 5 extra special songs for them to hear as they started their wedding celebrations with their guests.

But first was their big arrival from the wedding ceremony. They wanted that special moment to be just perfect as they walked onto the terrace for the first time as Man and Wife so Mathew and Lorna picked the wedding music favourite “All You Need is Love” to accompany their big entrance. The instantly recognisable song and the unforgettable fanfare start encouraged the cheering and smiling guests no end!

As the wedding reception proceeded we made sure to work through the couple’s favourite song lists, interspersed with their special and romantic arrangement requests “One Day Like This”, “You Got the Love”, and “It Must be Love” being firm favourites with the guests and Niche Quartet.

After the wedding Mathew wrote to us:

“Lorna and I would just like to say a huge thank you to you and Niche for Saturday – even though we were pretty busy chatting to guests we both heard all our favourite and special songs being played – which added a really a special feel to the drinks reception.Everything about the day was perfect, so sorry we never had time to thank you in person.

Best wishes 

Mathew and Lorna”

It is so lovely to hear that the couples we have entertained loved our work! To read more from past hirers of Niche – The London String Quartet Click Here!

Yesterday was our first December wedding and Niche – The London String Quartet travelled out across the frosty fields of Essex to provide wedding music for a beautiful countryside wedding.

The venue was the lovely Maidens Barn and Niche had arranged and rehearsed plenty of new wedding music requests for the happy couple to enjoy. The String Quartet was hired for 3hrs to entertain guests with our modern music selections during the reception in the marque and then to move to the hall where dinner would be served and provide a different set of classical and Christmas songs. The important request was that the five songs that we had written specially for the brides were to be played when they were around to enjoy them with their guests and children – this was made possible by our large and varied experience of wedding entertainment and of course the careful timing of our flexible setlists.

All of Niche were excited for this to be the first outing of some of our latest Christmas songs, ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Let it Snow’ and also to play old traditional favourites such as ‘Deck the Halls’. Our arrangement and performance of Kirsty’s favourite song Iris finished to applaud by the guests and people were tapping their toes and children dancing as we played the special romantic wedding song requests One Day Like This, If Your Not the One, Only Girl in the World, All My Life, and You Give Me Something. It was a beautiful wedding with a high level of fun and Niche were happy to add something extra special to the joyous atmosphere! Kirsty and Naomi were even kind enough to quickly come out to say that our performance was everything they’d dreamed of as we finished our set, which to Niche means it was a complete success.

Congratulations Kirsty and Naomi!

Niche – The London String Quartet had an extremely busy time in this weekend rushing around London performing in all different settings! The 2 bookings that stand out the most were played within 24hrs of each other!

On Friday Niche Quartet travelled to famous London venue The Underworld in Camden to accompany The Eljiah as session musicians in their specially arranged full album gig. This gig had been months in the planning and fans from all over Europe would be travelling to experience this one of style concert. Also some of the Niche Quartet fans that had experienced our playing in entirely different wedding based events were coming along to hear the performance!

It turned out to be an amazing gig with nearly 500 fans filling the venue and creating an energised and buzzing atmosphere right from the start. The Elijah’s debut album ‘I Loved I Hated I Destroyed I Created’ is awash with lush and emotive string sounds, and therefore since July Kimberley from Niche Quartet had been working with the composer and band member Sean Harrison to get the scoring and music perfect for this highly anticipated gig. It went exactly as planned and the both the band, Niche Quartet and the fans were completely absorbed into the music throughout the whole set – a complete success!

Feedback from the fans and the band has been excellent and Niche London Quartet were so glad we could be involved – A DVD is soon to be released of the performance: See The Trailer Here

Within 24hrs Niche – The London String Quartet were heading to the heart of the city to provide wedding reception music at Haberdashers’ Hall. The couple had already been married in a luxury wedding in Barbados and had returned to their hometown London to have their wedding reception. They used Niche Quartet’s complimentary arrangement service to have the wedding music they walked down the aisle played at the beginning and end of the reception.

After much work and rehearsing we arranged Debussy’s enchanting Clair de Lune (famously used in the last scene of Ocean’s 11) and it is now a firm favourite in our classical repertoire! For the remainder of the reception we entertained guests by creating a jovial atmosphere with classical favourites mixed in freely with our modern wedding songs. See what Paul had to say about Niche Quartet and our performance here!

A highly exciting and varied way to spend a weekend for Niche – The London String Quartet!