rare // Classified ScoopThe venue's new matchmaking add-on was installed to catch dishonest couples and instead audited the Hall's own 1974 licence, which belongs to the eel store next door.
Verdict: ★★½ out of five. Accurate to a fault, and only the venue is the worse for it.
On the day CNN reported that artificial intelligence has entered online dating and users should beware, Tallowgate Hall, a 240-seat goblin wedding venue on Tallowgate Lane, switched on its Banns Concierge ahead of a 14:00 booking. The product is sold as a vetting aid: it checks each couple's declared history against the public banns. It was never sold as a vetting aid for the building. This reviewer has used it for one full morning and offers the following findings, in the manner of Marrowby (1998) on the ceremonial ledger.
What we liked
The Concierge is thorough. Within 11 minutes of onboarding through The Mainframe, where its first utterance was the customary print('Hello World'), it had cross-referenced the Vexmoor–Tarn banns against 14 registries and found them unobjectionable. Battery life is excellent. It has not tired, and it has not taken the lunch the events manager, Odo Brankle, spent forty minutes explaining it was owed.
Build quality is likewise sound. The unit is housed in a rack-mounted cabinet of brushed alder, and the cabinet will outlast every marriage solemnised near it, a standard Pellucid and Dross (2011) set for durable goods and few goods meet.
It also explains itself. Mr Brankle, who keeps a single-serve soup in the staff fridge labelled with his own name in case of theft, now has a printed rationale for every refusal.
What we did not
Asked to confirm the Hall's authority to solemnise, the Concierge retrieved Certificate of Hallowing No. 114. It was issued on 3 March 1974. Its address is 9 Tallowgate Lane. The Hall stands at 11. Number 9 is the Tallowgate Cold Store, an eel warehouse that has held the only valid licence on the lane for 52 years.
The Hall's founder moved the sign in 1974 and nobody has compared it since. By the Concierge's count, 3,106 couples have been married there, each by Form 9, the Declaration of Constructive Attendance, a clause under which a couple standing in one building are deemed to be standing in the adjacent one. Constructive attendance has never been tested. The Cold Store's lessee, whose rent has not moved since 1989, has been notified and has replied, in full, "Which eels."
A further defect: the Concierge cannot be switched to ignore building. Mr Brankle tried for twenty minutes. The setting does not exist.
Should you buy it
If you are a couple, no purchase is needed. The Vexmoor–Tarn ceremony proceeds at 14:00 as booked, and the Hall has offered, at no extra charge, to hold it at 13:45 in the Cold Store's loading bay, where it is legal, at 2°C, beside 400 crates. Both parties have accepted. The bride has asked whether the eels can be moved. They cannot; they are the licensee.
If you are a venue, consider whether you wish to know. The Concierge retails at 19 for a stamp.
The cake, a four-tier lemon, has been placed in the Cold Store for the cold chain, and is therefore the only item at the wedding whose location is lawful.
