Many of you may be aware that our reception venue is currently under renovation and yes, it is quite stressful wondering whether it will be ready on time, if not, what do we do etc. But, we have chosen to be positive and hope for the best.

In the past couple of days, I have spoken with Monique from the Watermark quite a bit and we have exchanged a few emails. While there will be quite a bit of last minute scramble, I think we should be fine. To help with our seating, Monique sent through a floor plan of the new restaurant, a la carte style, so it was still a bit of a struggle to visualise everything but she patiently explained and offered options so I was somewhat comforted by her reassurance.

When I got home, I showed Ben the floor plan and ran him through a few things. The funny thing is, the first thing Ben wanted to know was not the floor plan per se, but who is doing the renovation - I think this is more so because we’ve done quite a number of shop fit outs ourselves and he’s super keen to know more interior designers. Anyhow, we found beneath the little logo sitting on the bottom left hand corner the firm’s web address so we hopped on.

The company Watermark has engaged is Hecker Phelan & Guthrie, a firm based in Melbourne that does residential, retail, hospitality and commercial projects. We were very impressed by the projects they’ve done (all amazing!!). The most well known out of the hospitality space is its collaborative work with Woods Bagot to create the ivy complex in Sydney (come to think of it, both the ivy and hp&g logos share a very similar, if not the same font type!), but they have also done quite a few projects in Brisbane as well.

ivy, Penthouse. Collaborative partners HP&G & Woods Bagot. Image: Trevor Mein

While we are worried about the progress of the renovation (just a bit!!), we are equally excited about being the first diners (for menu tasting) and the first party to host our function there after the facelift. I hope we don’t smell the paint! haha!

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