Hitched!

And just like that, I am a married woman! Well I say just like that but hours of gardening by mum, weeks of moving by dad, months of crafting by me, a solid week of transforming the garden and woods into a ribbon land by Dave, my little sister and I, several trips back and forth to Edinburgh to pick up ice, drinks containers, bar bits, food shopping, ice cream runs and a small amount of angst/pre wedding stress later we got married under the sunny Fife sky. It truly was a magical day, the sun shone on us all day and everything we had worked so hard open came together perfectly. It felt, and still feels a bit, like a surreal dream. So here is what went down…..

I always knew I wanted to get married in mums beautiful garden, a place so special to me and also so spectacularly stunning, and it was even more incredible than I could have imagined on the day. We got married in the walled garden under an arch decorated with pots of sweetpeas and festooned with swallow ribbons overlooking mums beautiful sunken pond garden with the Fife countryside and coastline in the distance. It is my favourite view from the garden and it was so incredible to look out from it onto the smiling faces of our friends and family on the day. My wonderful friend Natalie was our priestess on the day and she was an absolute showstopper. She composed the most heartfelt, beautiful ceremony based on a rough humanist outline which I penned and had everyone in tears. Dave and I wrote our own vows which we read to each other through tears and we had a knot tying ceremony to seal the deal. We had hit up the Edinburgh registry ceremony earlier in May so legalise our union but the day in Fife was the real deal for us, the emotional one and the one we will remember forever.

I have a thing about marquees, I really don’t like them so we were delighted to find Jamie of Present Tents whose stretch tents provided the perfect canvas to build our wedding dream around. We also hired bell tents for the field for people to stay in on the night of the wedding and Jamie’s team worked so hard to install everything in the hot hot sunshine and we could not have loved the tent more.

Decoration wise - I really did loose my mind a bit with all the crafting. But hey, I honestly love to craft and it never felt like a chore.  Pinterest became a firm friend as I saved image after image of colourful, alternative wedding decorations. I also felt strongly that I wanted to source as much as possible second hand and spent hours trawling gumtree and Facebook marketplace for paper lanterns, ribbons and linen. Dave and I call each other sweetpea, hence the heavy sweetpea theme, and swallows are also symbolic for us as they mark the arrival of summer in Whinhill and they mate for life, like us! So there was a swallow/sweetpea/colour theme.

Jules (our amazing caterer) suggested renting napkins, and I thought hey, I could probably whip up some napkins - this was a pretty MAD idea and I won’t lie that I did regret it a little as I sewed my 35th napkin but I was really happy with them in the end. Made using a mixture of gifted materials, linen scraps I bought on eBay, and materials I have collected over the years, I did a very rough hem on each one, freehand sewed swallows onto some, hand painted some and embellished others with ribbons. Mum and I have been scouring charity shops for plates to use as I wanted mismatched, thrifted crockery. So there are plates from the trip Dave and I took to Mull last year, some bought when Mum and I went to see Florence in Glasgow earlier this year as well as plates gathered from years of inheriting them from flat moves/grandparents ect, and we also borrowed some from the Elie Town Hall - so it was a jolly plate affair. The tables were also decorated with my hand painted sweetpea bottles ( I had friend and family saving glass bottle from me for months which I cleaned and hand painted) and also tea light jars gifted by Alice from Scotts Apothecary which I also painted. And the whole tent was filled with the aroma of our bespoke Scott’s Apothecary candles which Alice kindly gifted to us, and Dave created custom swallow vinyls which we applied to the outside of these candles and the small flower vases filled with sweetpea posies from the garden. Alice also gifted us hand soaps and lotions for each bathroom so our guests had a luxury toilet experience!

I love a ribbon and I had quite a bit of felt leftover from hand embroidering patches, so I spent MANY hours cutting swallows out of felt, hand painting them and attaching them to ribbons which I bought on gumtree and charity shops. I also had lots of spare silk from my embroidery days so I cut this up to create silk ribbons to hang on the back of the chairs and in the woods. I strung swallow ribbons on the front of the tent as a backdrop to the top table, and pretty much ribboned anything else I could find, including the lane way down to the woods where we tossed the confetti and drank Cremant in the sunshine.  The hut which my little sister and her architect friends built is perched down the lane in the woods was the perfect speech giving platform and of course, I ribboned it for the big day. We all LOVE the hut and it was the perfect place to congregate post ceremony and chat to our guests among the ribbons and grasses.

Originally I wanted to create a ribboned ceiling on the tent but decided that was too much faff so I sourced second hand paper lanterns in various sizes and hand painted them (with a little help from my sisters and mum) so I could create a cool decorative install for inside the tent. I didn’t have a specific idea of how I wanted everything to hang within the tent but I knew it would all come together when the tent was up. We were lent some giant lanterns by my little sisters friend who got married the weekend before us, and these turned out to be the perfect final piece in the install puzzle when we were deciding how to display the lanterns. My little sister came up with the idea of wrapping them round the two tent poles which was perfect! Then came my boat decoration which was one of my favourite parts of the tent decor and absolutely unplanned. I found the balsam boat in the barn the week before the wedding and thought, hey why not could cover that with dried flowers from the studio and ribbons and create a hanging botanical ribbon boat for the tent…..and I loved loved how it turned out. It is now hanging in my studio and I can’t wait to have a house big enough to hang it in one day!

And of course you don’t need much decoration when you are blessed with such a show stopper of a venue. Mum’s garden was the star of the show really, my dress tried to outshine it (lol) but the botanical wonderland mum has spent years cultivating had everyone spellbound. She has given months of energy, time and hard graft wedding, growing, tending and whispering sweet nothings to her impressive array of plants. She grew towers of sweetpeas in honour of our theme and nickname, which we dotted in an around the tent and arch. As all gardeners will know, the weather this year has been pretty wonky, so a lot of the flowers had planned were over by the wedding (the alliums and delphiniums for example) so she got some extra buckets from Pratis flowers so she was armed and ready to decorate come Friday morning. Her best friend Lel came up early the day before the wedding and they worked away in the barn creating their beautiful arrangements and the bouquets. All of their efforts were incredible and it was a proper flower festival, with large arrangements greeting guests in the hall, in the tent and in the garden. What would I do without that wonderful women, she is a marvel and what she has created in the garden is truly magical, wedding or no wedding, it’s such a special place.

We both wanted something casual, DIY and intimate so we kept the invite list pretty minimal (which did cause the usual amount of family opinions but we stuck to our guns and kept it small) and had around 80 people in the end which was just the right amount for us. Neither of us wanted much formality so rather than a sit down served dinner we booked the supremely talented Jules of Patti&Jules (who made a delicious Middle Eastern feast for my 30th) to make and serve delicious canapés and three scrumpy salads for the main meal to accompany Zak’s Kilted Pig Hog Roast, so it was a fill your plate and munch kind of affair. Jules made relish trays or Tirimasu for pudding then we cleared the ten and made space for the danccinggggg.

We wanted to shine a light on our amazingly talented friends too and we were so lucky that Dave’s pals agreed to form a band for the night (they have all been professional musicians  - some still are, but they hadn’t played together before) and they wrote an incredible set list which included learning and performing our first dance, Collide, from the film Queen&Slim. I was totally blown away, they were absolutely wonderful and had everyone up dancing. My little sisters friend, Josh, who is a man of many talents was our DJ - returning for another whinhill party as he DJ’d my 21st back back in the day. Our farmer neighbour, David Jack, brought his accordion down for a few reels to get the party started - you can’t have a Scottish wedding without a ceilidh. We had fireworks, dancing, a self serve bar with Gin&Tonics galore, more dancing in the glittering tent lights and then when my feet felt like they would fall off, I headed to the hut to rest my head before our post wedding sea swim and bacon rolls on the Sunday morning.

And of course lets take a moment for my dress, which I truly adored wearing - it was a Rowan Joy creation which I bought in a sample sale just after we got engaged. I had it altered by the amazing Sew Ho studios and she transformed it into a princess style, Disney queen, fairytale dream dress that fit like a glove and let me live my wildest Disney fantasy in real life. I bought the veil on Vinted and hand embroidered swallows into it and then hand painted it pink to match the dress as it was a bit of a stark white. I also had some silk Imprint fabric printed which I made into little pouches for my bridesmaids with embroidered details. I can’t wait to wear my dress again! Dave wore a beautiful tailored suit from Walker Slater which he kept as a surprise for me on the big day (I have never seen him in a suit and he looks blooming gorgeous!). I also spent a few months crafting a wedding banner out of scrap fabric, combining appliqué fabric and hand embroidery. We hung it as people came in and asked everyone to sign a piece of paper and pin it to the banner, when the dust has settled and I have some time I will hand embroider all the names on to have a record of all our guests who helped make the day so memorable.

And then just like that, it was all over…except for the day of cleaning up which I powered through and tackled on Sunday with my mums friend Sarah so Mum wasn’t left with tonnes to do. Once we had the glasses washed, the tent cleared and the decorations taken down, Dave and I headed to our first hut stop for the mini moon. This gorgeous Small House on the Hill, a cabin perched on the hills above Elie overlooking the golf course and Earlsferry beach. We drank wine and feel asleep in the amazing outdoor bath, walked into Elie for a pub lunch at the Ship and relaxed on the balcony of this gorgeous hut. Then we hit the road to Oban so three night at Inverlonan, luxurious bothies which were the perfect place to unwind. We ground our  morning coffee by hand, boiled the kettle on the fire, made sourdough pizzas in the outdoor oven, paddleboarded and horse box sauna’ed, drank wine overlooking the loch, slept, read, relaxed and quite simply had the BEST time. We finished out stay with the wild dining experience which was mind blowing, we were driven to a remote beautiful dilapidated barn and were sat on cosy sheepskins on a straw strewn floor with candles and lanterns lighting our intimate  8 course dinner. We shared the experience with a lovely couple from Berlin on their honeymoon and it was an unforgettable experience. So now real life resumes and we are still living in the post wedding/hut love bubble so getting back to work and reality is going to take some time.

Photos a mixture of one snapped by our lovely guests, and professional ones from Josh Lipworth, Josh Linneman Brown and Paul Gilling.