In 2006 when planning my own wedding I went to various wedding fayres and being a complete Chocoholic, I fell in love with the chocolate fountains.  It was the first time I had seen or even heard of one and I thought they were amazing!

 

I was a Manager of a Travel agency at the time and we were organising our own wedding fair in the shop and that's when I realised I loved the organising and excitement of events.

 

The wedding fair was a success and I got married the following year (and of course had to hire a chocolate fountain for our evening reception - where I spent a lot of time during the evening!).

 

At first I bought a mini chocolate fountain and had lots of fun with it, serving it to customers in the shop on event days and to family & friends at parties.  Then within 6 months of the wedding I had decided I wanted to start my own business and so invested in one large chocolate fountain and a Beverage Fountain and there it all began - Choco-licious was born!

 

Almost instantly we were booked for weddings, events and parties and regularly by Oceana nightclub in Cardiff for their big Saturday nights, which were crazy but fun!

 

We immediately built up a great reputation for being the company people could rely on for their events and had recommendations coming in from venues and clients passing our details around.

 

In 2010 I left working in Travel to have children and it was also the perfect opportunity to build up the buisness.  I was always looking for something new to offer clients so next came the Fruit Palm trees which led to large bookings for Asian events and especially Indian Weddings. 

 

It was when I was at a wedding in 2012 providing a Chocolate fountain when I first saw the Photo Booth, I immediately came home and said to my husband that I wanted one! - He thought I was mad.  But we looked into it and decided to test the waters with a new website which we called Bristol Photo Booths - the response was fantastic and soon I had taken bookings before we even had the booth.  Within a few months we had the booth (with the software customised so it is unique to us) and we were soon at our first booking, then another and another!  

 

We loved the idea of the Green screen fun backgrounds but noticed that most software left dark shadows around the people or dark patches on the background.   So my talented husband (Software engineer as well as many other things) designed our own complicated programme which is unique to our company.  It means that all our green screen photos are perfect - it is something that we are very proud about as many photo booth companies cannot get this right.

 

Most of our new services and products have come from clients new requests or idea's - like the vintage booth for example, one of our clients said they liked the theme so I came up with the lace curtain background and props cart, then we had another bride that also loved  vintage and liked the green screen backgrounds- so that was when we started offering vintage green screen's and since then have become our most popular.

A client asking me for an Ice cream cart, Popcorn and Candy floss meant I also then added this to my list of services and the business built up from there.

 

I needed a new business name to encompass all the new services, so in 2013 we renamed the business Star Events.  However I decided I couldn't just abandon the 'Bristol Photo Booths' or 'Choco-licious' name because of the reputation we had already built up over the years and people now recognised those names and knew us.   So we now have the 3 names but just the 1 website to keep it simple but have kept our 2 separate Facebook pages.

 

The business has gone from strength to strength and I would say 75% of our business is straight from recommendations or referrals.

 

2014 was a great year for us, Choco-licious won a 'Bristol & Somerset Wedding Award'.    We also featured in the Clifton Life Magazine in Celebrity Magician Chris Cox's column and then provided a Photo booth for his wedding at Arnolfini in June.

 

In September 2013 and 2014 we were invited to attend the National Reality TV Awards in London and then the the Urban Music Awards in November where we walked the red carpet and sat on Rylan Clark's table.  We met lots of other celebrities and even got invited to the after party.

Jade Jones from Damage took a business card & said he would contact me about a photo booth for his sons birthday party which we would be delighted to do (especially as Damage was one of my favourite groups growing up!)

 

Because our Photo Booth was in high demand we added the Photo pod to our services which is an inhouse design unique to us and proving to be very popular with our clients.  It means that if our Photo Booth is already booked on a date we can now offer clients an alternative.   So far it has proved a huge success and is so popular some clients are even preffering it to the booth.

 

2014 was our most successful & busiest year to date with approximately 80 bookings, and I am personally involved in every single one.  I try my best to attend each and every booking whether it be just setting up or staying there for the event although this is not always possible  if we have more than one booking on the same night.  If I am not able to attend I can assure you one of my capable members of my team will be there to ensure everything runs smoothly and I will oversee it.

 

We have already had an amazing start to 2015 by winning a Bristol & Somerset Wedding Award as voted for by all our lovely Brides & Grooms!

We are really over the moon as our reputation and customer service means everything to us and to be recognised in the Wedding industry is a dream come true.

 

We look forward to hearing from you and helping you with your celebration or special event :)

 

Anika  - Business Owner & Managing Director