A Scottish Wedding in a Fairytale Church

Emma and Justin were mar­ried on the edge of a Scot­tish Loch — Loch Awe, near Oban. Their wed­ding day incor­po­rated lit­tle touches of true indi­vid­u­al­ity: a bit of Bob Mar­ley in church; African fab­ric for the guys’ waist­coats along­side kilts and a Cèilidh for the evening reception.

I have a wed­ding report here from Emma, which I love — and with great wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy by Clare West, there’s really not much I can add except, enjoy the blog fea­ture and do leave a com­ment for the bride and groom if you can!

Claire xxx

Justin got his morn­ing suit from a sec­ond hand tai­lor in Ful­ham called Old Hat. We also had made by a good friend of mine waist­coats from African print. Justin and his 2 best­men had a cer­tain print and then the ush­ers had the same but in a dif­fer­ent color.

My wed­ding dress was Trento from Pronovias. It was the first dress I tried on, my sis­ter, my mom and I all loved it straight away. Of course we went away and I tried on heaps more but we kept com­par­ing every­thing to that first dress. By the time we decided to go for it it was last sea­sons col­lec­tion and hardly any­one would stock it. We found a lovely shop in Edin­burgh who could still get us the last sea­son styles so we didn’t hes­i­tate that time!

Acces­sories weren’t that impor­tant to me. My dress had such lovely lace and bead­ing so I wanted to keep every­thing else sim­ply. Mum made my veil with a sim­ple clip and I had no jew­ellery on apart from my sister’s ear­rings which she had got on her wed­ding day from my grand­mother. The shoes I wanted to make sure were not too high as I don’t nor­mally wear heels a lot and I didn’t want to wad­dle down the aisle. To make them more excit­ing I made lit­tle Africa bows to go on the front of them which matched the groom and his ush­ers waistcoats.

The day was per­fect. The church looked amaz­ing. The ser­vice was typ­i­cally us, with laugh­ter through­out, hymns-which included Bob Marley’s, ‘Three Lit­tle Birds’. We had the whole church try­ing to sing along to it with the organ! Then back home to cel­e­brate in the garden.

Every­one was ready to party even though it was rain­ing through­out the day. We had a great party which included Scot­tish coun­try danc­ing, a dance off for our first dance and fire­works while leav­ing on the trac­tor at mid­night (we sneaked back in to dance with our friends until 2am). It was great and it was lovely to cel­e­brate the day with all our friends and fam­ily. I wish I could go back there.

Details from the wed­ding marquee

Our most mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments

My cousin’s (who was our chauf­feur) dirty jokes on the way to the church to calm the nerves of me, Mum and Dad!

When I unex­pect­edly said ‘I will’ a bit too loud in the church dur­ing our vows!

Justin telling me dur­ing recep­tion that he had writ­ten the sec­ond read­ing (a poem) in our service.

Our first dance, which was a dance off. We were both so ner­vous before but it was so much fun and every­one was lov­ing it.

Fire­works in the rain.

Emma’s wed­ding day advice: Don’t stress about any of it on the day, let every­one else do that (but thank them for it!) and you will have the best day of your life.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers

Clare West – Doc­u­men­tary wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher. Please visit Clare’s offi­cial web­site for infor­ma­tion, or check out her blog at www.clarewestphotography.co.uk/index.php/blog — there’s more from Emma and Justin’s Scot­tish wed­ding on Clare’s blog here too! www.clarewestphotography.co.uk/index.php/2011/08/emma-justin

Piper Active – Scot­tish “funky kick ass” ceilidh band with tra­di­tional roots. Visit their web­site to read about their whis­tles and stomp­ing drum and bass!

Inver­hall Mar­quees from John­stone, near Glasgow

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Emma and Justin, and thank you for shar­ing your very per­sonal and inspi­ra­tional wed­ding on my blog. Thank you to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Clare West for sub­mit­ting the wed­ding pho­tos for us, and for mak­ing the jour­ney from Buck­ing­hamshire to Oban to shoot the wedding!