A BUSINESSWOMAN who has applied to extend her hotel and wedding venue is reassuring couples the work will not affect their big days.

Around 150 brides-to-be are booked in to celebrate their nuptials at the Hey Green Country House Hotel at Marsden over the next 18 months.

Their plans were thrown into panic when the hotel applied to Kirklees Council for permission to build 28 new bedrooms and erect a glass-roofed shelter outside the main function room.

But director Siobhan Hunter explained that although she was hoping for planning consent, most of the work would not go ahead for years.

She said: “If people have booked with us, there is really nothing to worry about.

“All we want to build immediately is the outdoor structure which we hope to complete in a few weeks during January or February when there is only one wedding booked in.

“The bedrooms are secondary. We were advised, as we were doing one piece of planning, to apply for them at the same time to save us having to pay the £700 it costs to put in another planning application again.

“It will give us some leeway, but in the current climate it doesn’t make business sense to build more bedrooms.”

The decorative outdoor shelter will be built across the front of the main Eastergate suite, using space currently used for car parking.

The structure – in the style of a Victorian railway station – will be open on four sides and will have a pitched glass roof. It will have permanent flooring and will offer space for a dedicated hog roast and barbecue.

Smokers will also be able to use the shelter, which will seat between 60 and 80 people.

There are also plans to get the structure licensed to allow weddings to take place underneath it.

Siobhan added: “We have had so many bad summers now but when it is warm, people want to be outside.

“This means people can be outside even if it is raining.”

A glass screen will also to be fitted at one end of the structure to help contain noise from late night music.

Public consultation of the current planning application ended last Friday.