When it came to planning their wedding, Sarah and Colin had a wedding planning advantage. The bride is an event organiser and owns her own venue! Not surprisingly, Sarah had already been dreaming of her wedding for many years and knew she wanted a big, over the top, extravagant Scottish celebration.
“I wanted it to be traditionally Scottish but also glamorous and contemporary too,” she explained. “Luckily I was given a very loose reign by my husband-to-be as he trusted my vision. He was involved in all the big decisions but let me run with the entire event myself pretty much…which is as most brides want it, lets be honest! As I’ve organised events for a living for many many years I knew how it was going feel planning a huge event – ever so slightly stressful but amazing and fun and magical too!”
Their theme became pinks, greens and golds with stags and lots of flowers. “We started by booking the gorgeous Fasque House which was owned by the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, before being sold off privately to become a wedding venue. It holds up to 40 guests which was perfect because we wanted to make a weekend of it with friends and family coming from all over the world, and we knew our children would be safe running around the grounds. They have a deer park out front, so this prompted us to hire in a massive stag! We took him down the motorway in an open trailer which got some funny looks.”
Sarah wore a beautiful floral dress by Ian Stuart however she had already bought another one when she fell in love it! “I bought a modest dress at a low price but one day was watching Say Yes to the Dress and saw the most incredible dress by Ian Stuart. I knew I had to have it. I spent a long time trying to track one down and eventually got one second hand because they were discontinued. The dress was crazy over the top but amazing, exactly what I wanted from the wedding.”
Their highlight of their day was their ceremony. “The groomsmen and ushers walked down the isle to Nice Day for a White Wedding by Billy Idol and the bridesmaids walked down to Going to the Chapel. I walked down to When I Fall in Love by Nat King Cole. The service was pretty much written by us with help from our Celebrant, Jane Patmore, who offers bespoke services. She offered ideas for wording too. It was so personal to us and we loved it. We walked back down the isle to Your Love Keeps Lifting me Higher.”
Not surprisingly, their biggest expense was the venue, but it was so worth it. “We hired the house for three days so pretty much had a three day wedding”, she said. “We had a private tour of the local distillery the morning after, so the drinking and fun just continued on from there, with the whisky shots getting us in the mood. We didn’t go to elaborate lengths with entertainment on the day, our band was a duo called CODO who are friends of ours, as we figured the alcohol was more important, so got a specialist cocktail company in to mix AMAZING cocktails.”
“I did all of the décor and table arrangements myself so I’m now left with a million candles from The Range and Dunelm Mill…! I designed all the stationery and our favours were little colour matched books about Scotland to reiterate the Scottish theme.”
“The best thing about planning our wedding was the freedom and creativity to do what we wanted and bring a vision to life,” she concluded, “and to make so many of our friends and family happy at the same time.”
