We held our wedding reception at Pyra. We booked the entire venue, with the upstairs loft serving as a dance floor with bar and downstairs having tables and seating for guests.  Canapes were served upstairs and a buffet dinner was served downstairs.  We lucked out with great April weather, so guests were also able to enjoy Pyra’s patio and additional space on Lonsdale Road. We were very happy with our decision to have our reception at Pyra, and many of our guests commented on how lovely the space was, how nice the staff were, and how delicious the food was.
 
The venue: 

The space is gorgeous with lots of natural light upstairs.  Guests arrived at 4pm but we had the venue for the entire day, and Pyra gave our florist access earlier to set up beautiful flower arrangements and candles - it looked stunning.  Pyra set up our welcome sign and card box too. The venue also accepted delivery of our cake on the morning of the wedding which was a huge help, set it up very nicely upstairs, and cut it for us after the formal “cake cutting” shots.  We were able to coordinate with Pyra ahead of time to arrange the space how we wanted, such as how many tables we wanted downstairs and the set-up of the loft upstairs.  They even had a microphone ready for us upstairs so we could say a few words to our guests before our cake cutting. Perfect! For the evening dancing, we were able to set the disco lighting to our colour scheme, which worked really well with candles and foliage (latter 2 provided by our florist).
 
The food:

The buffet dinner was fantastic.  Pyra gave us multiple menu items to choose from and we were able to fix a nice menu that took into account guests’ dietary restrictions.  We initially booked the venue when it had a different chef and menu.  We came in a few months before our wedding to try the new menu – our dinner was delicious then and there was no dip in quality for the buffet-style served at our reception. Fionn worked with us how to plan best - because we wanted a relaxed style with a dance floor upstairs, we ended up feeding our 80 guests in two sittings downstairs, which worked perfectly. The upstairs space can seat 60 people, which didn’t work for how we planned our event, but does look really nice in photos. The late night food served around 10pm also went down very well.
 
The staff:

The staff, including the bartenders and waiters, were hardworking, friendly and very nice to guests.  Enough staff were around that guests never had to wait long for drinks.  Members of staff cut our cake for us and also boxed up the late night food for guests to bring home.  Fionn, the day-of coordinator, was on-site for our entire reception and was very helpful, even helping coordinate our midnight bus arrival.
 
Responsiveness:
Overall we were happy with the responsiveness of the venue.  It took a little while to nail down the final details of the food menu and drinks menu/bar tab but we were ultimately very happy with the result.  As the venue hosts more weddings/ larger-scale events we’d expect this will improve.


Overall:

We highly recommend Pyra for a wedding reception. We had 80 guests in total, which worked very well for the canapes/cocktail hour upstairs (4-6pm), sit-down buffet downstairs (6-8pm, split into two seatings) and dancing upstairs (8pm-midnight).  The upstairs loft was able to fit all 80 guests plus a four-piece band.  Lonsdale Road is also a charming street that provided great photo opportunities.  We looked into several other venues, and came away happy with Pyra's quote – we were able to book the venue, food (including canapes, dinner and late night food) and a generous bar tab for roughly the amount some other London venues were charging for just their space (no food or drink included). We and our guests had a fantastic time. Thanks so much to Fionn and the Pyra team :)

We had our wedding celebration at Lula. We booked the loft and restaurant for this.

Positives:
The venue is beautiful and needs minimal decoration.
The food was amazing; the chef is truly professional and everyone loved it.
They redecorated the restaurant section and added a set of couches to make it a lounge, which was beautiful.
The staff was very hardworking, professional, and lovely.

They provided us with a lounge, a wedding breakfast space and a dance floor.

Flexibility with Cake:
The bakery was scheduled to deliver and set up the cake at 16:45, but they delivered it at 09:45 instead. The Lula team handled the situation professionally by storing the cake and setting it up at the correct time. They presented the cake beautifully and assisted in cutting it into nice pieces. It could not have been more perfect.


The list of available drinks was huge, and they were happy to make custom drinks and bring in different juices if requested in advance. The event manager tried to accommodate every wish we had, and on the day we could not have hoped for more. Most of our guests said it was one of the best weddings and most beautiful venues they had ever been to.

Negatives:
Food tasting for the wedding menu was not included, which we had assumed would be, but it was given at a 50% discount. We had to sort out the floral decoration last minute, as they had initially suggested they would arrange it for us after providing a budget, but later said we needed to find our own. At times, they were a bit slow to respond, which made us anxious, but after communicating with them, this was resolved, and communication was very swift.

In conclusion:
Lula gave us the most beautiful wedding we could have dreamt of. We highly recommend them. The venue, the food, the service were amazing, and we could not have hoped for more.