Haste to the wedding (I): before the trip

Well, the secret is out now, after being together 20 years, James and I eloped for a late-summer wedding overlooking the gorgeous Loch Lomond, not too far north of Glasgow. And as we’ve been asked a few times what prompted this, a blog post seems in order. However, that’s not really so easy to write, not least because of course this is all quite personal. But, here we are with a little of the story - although I think we can all agree this is mainly about sharing the photographs! Although that will mostly have to wait for blog instalment II.

First, let’s make one thing absolutely clear - this was a true elopement, and our friends and family did not know we were going to do this in advance. Although we could never have imagined us having a big wedding complete with party - we just don’t know enough people for one thing - even a micro-wedding (generally thought of as <25 guests) just always somehow felt too much, a statement that after 20 years something is different when in fact our aim is for the opposite, for nothing to be different. However, the alternative, or so we thought, of just popping over to the registry office in Stevenage to sign a bit of paper, felt too much the other way - lacking in the romantic.

Then earlier this year my sister got married at a small venue in Cornwall, a venue we learnt more usually hosted elopements rather than even micro-weddings. Once home, a little bit of internet searching revealed that there is a whole industry that is geared to helping couples arrange elopements - weddings with just the couple themselves, or perhaps them and no more than a handful of guests - which was quite a surprise given we’d only really been previously vaguely aware of them, perhaps in the context of Gretna Green.

We then sort of parked the idea over the early summer, that is until we finally got round to thinking we really needed to start arranging our main holiday of the year ourselves. Hence, the notion, not overly seriously, of perhaps, just perhaps, arranging an elopement to coincide with a holiday.

As we often go to Jersey, we had a quick look there, but the ferry timetable this year made the holiday aspects particularly awkward, and anyway their government actually requires a year’s notice (a year!) for a wedding. We found some more elopement places in Cornwall, including one aptly in a former cow shed (yes, we have a particular fondness for cows, just one of those things!) and one in a wood shed, but somehow they weren’t quite right (the cow shed was a bit big, the wood shed was alternatively used as a gym, my sister had already done the castle…) and so we then thought more and more about Scotland.

Because it turns out Scotland still has different laws regarding weddings to the rest of the UK - namely you can have them anywhere, not just in a licensed venue. [There are plans to reform this for England and Wales too, which we of course wholeheartedly support.] In fact, James has actually always fancied a holiday in Scotland and has said we should go more than once, but I’ve always been unsure on it, mainly because I’m more frightened of the midges (always pronounced ‘midge-ees’ in our family, as it is in most of Scotland), as biting insects always go for me. But I was not adverse to the idea, as I knew it would be a stunning place to visit.

This brings us to our first contact with Wee Wild Weddings, a collective of small businesses that have come together to help couples arrange very small outdoor ‘whatever the weather’ weddings in a shortish timeframe. What they organise looked a perfect fit for us - help with location, a few photos, a few flowers, a special picnic, someone to do my hair and make-up, and a humanist celebrant to make it all legal - but not over the top. And their Instagram (@weewildweddings) showed off Scottish outdoor weddings as beyond glorious, even in some fairly, shall we say changeable, weather conditions.

I will say this was still a very tentative enquiry with some dates that, even to us, were now seemingly scarily close (about eight weeks off) - let’s be honest, we were absolutely sure we couldn’t pull it off without some professional help. I was fully expecting them to say no, it sadly wouldn’t be possible, they were too busy (COVID delays have meant there are a lot of weddings this year), it would be too soon to organise etc., but on the Monday morning there was a reply, saying, yes, it really, really could be done.

Wow… but scary at the same time.

At 6 weeks to go, after a video call with Sarah from Fotomaki Photography, a member of the Wee Wild team - who was very reassuring about the midges (well, that is she told us of two non-DEET repellents that actually worked) - we signed the contract to go ahead. And then, a bit of a mad scramble started; forms to allow this to be an official, legally binding civil partnership needed to reach the appropriate registrar with a minimum of 29 days to go.

It’s not a lie when you’re told Scotland has it all with regard to beyond stunning locations for weddings; you have forest glades, magical waterfalls, soaring mountains, dramatic lochs, sandy beaches, cliff-side beaches, fairy-tale ruined castles… every cliche you can think of cannot possibly describe how beautiful it can be. However, we settled on saying the Loch Lomond area, mainly so as to not go mad with a super long drive from home, and for self-catering style accommodation as opposed to a hotel. With that decided, we set about, with the help of the Wee Wild team, on finding places that worked as both having somewhere lovely to stay with somewhere lovely to have a wedding close by.

Several emails (I make it ten; sorry to Sarah and Cat of Fin Flükra, the organiser member of the Wee Wild team) and much perusing of the internet later, and we had booked a super romantic barn towards the middle of the eastern side of Loch Lomond (that side of the loch is within the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park) and narrowed down the location to two options, Strathcashell point or Cashel Forest. And with the forms finally in to the registrar (with even her reassuringly mentioning, yes, we could change the location slightly right up until the point we actually picked up the schedule - and maybe that we’d even want to after checking the weather forecast), we could relax, well a little.

Shortly after that, we also virtually met our celebrant, the lovely Kendal (@kendalthecelebrant from the Scottish Humanist Society). I’m not sure if she was just a little bemused by us - as she says, “every wedding is different because every couple is different”, but there was a bit of would you like to include this, that or the other (e.g. do vows or personal words), and we were err… no thank you, too ‘mushy’.

We also settled on no rings but there would be a gift exchange, and that, weather-depending, James, would play a wee tune on the tin whistle (a new hobby taken up during lockdown). OK, I talked him into the whistle-playing part - he’s generally not too sure on public playing yet, but honestly, his ‘toots’ sound good to me and it would just be us, Kendal, Sarah and our make-up artist Jenna (who was not only up for the challenge of doing hair and make-up for someone whose knowledge of such things could fit on a postage stamp, but had wonderfully agreed to accompany us to the ceremony to act as a witness).

The other thing to organise on our part while these things were were being sorted was of course some clothes for both James and me. I knew heels would be out even if I were in a building with a nice flat floor, and also knew they’d be no time to get a ‘true’ wedding dress done, even if that was within budget. And I wasn’t even sure on what type of dress to go for - just a ‘nice dress’ or one a bit ‘more obviously’ wedding.

But actually quite early on, I made a somewhat speculative sale purchase on what I can only describe as an ultra-feminine Champagne-coloured lace dress from the London-based company Needle and Thread, which has both gowns in larger sizes and ones that are designated ‘ankle’ length - which you can indeed take as just above the floor for wearing flats and not being the height of a model.

There was a little issue in trying it on - for reasons unrelated to superstition, I still didn’t want James to actually see me in the dress, but it was too delicate for me to be able to do up the zip myself. Cue a bit of covering myself up with a dressing gown, so at least James only saw the dress’s back, and then me prancing around going, “it fits, it fits” (and it actually did make me feel quite special, even if I didn’t vocalise that).

Now, although at that point we hadn’t seen any rain in Hertfordshire for months, I wasn’t unmindful that it could be very different in Scotland and that having a cover-up of some sort would be sensible. And that’s when I came across Niamh Designs, a Northern-Ireland-based small business supplying embroidered denim and faux-leather bridal jackets. Once I’d seen the design ‘wise men say…’, I couldn’t quite get it out of my head as perfect for someone who’d been with their other half 20 years already but also a joke on the fact that the wedding certainly hadn’t been long in the planning. And for someone looking to tone down the prettiness of a dress just a tad! I’d like to thank the owner for helping me make sure I could order it in time, given her lead times were really a little longer than we had.

With me sorted, that just left James. Of course he has a suit in the back of the cupboard somewhere, and of course it didn’t fit (too big). We then went though a gamut of options, yes, including the obligatory thought that this would be Scotland, you could hire a kilt, before eventually settling on we’d go for chinos, jacket and tie. It seemed that then every Saturday was spent in Hitchin trying to decide on what jacket, what tie.

Three weeks to go, and finally the jacket was bought - and we were thankful that the friend who had ‘popped round from The Netherlands’ on short notice that very morning and had to wait for our return from the shops didn’t enquire too closely on whose wedding we urgently needed this jacket for.

It took until one week to go until we had some boots, a shirt and a tie to complete his outfit, together with the chinos we already owned. Phew.

With decisions on picnic options having been given to Scottish Wild Picnics (the buffet option, but more on that next time), colour thoughts provided to the florist Briar Rose Design (cream and pastels to match the dress with clashing orange and hot pink to make them less feminine feeling) - pretty much it had all come together.

Apart from that is we were now the day before leaving for the trip, and the ceremony location still wasn’t fully pinned down. At this point, it felt like it was to be Cashel Forest, but for that option, it needed us to do a 500 ft climb to get to where we wanted to be (that is to a place that had a view of the loch; we just couldn’t go to a place that had such a view and not make it to the viewpoint!).

Although 500 ft up on a semi-easy track isn’t too bad in normal circumstances, it always was a concern for me how that could be very different when wearing a wedding dress, especially when logistics meant we did need to get to the ceremony location without taking so long walking there that we’d go over the amount of time allotted for Sarah to take photographs. [I should say here, it wasn’t entirely unexpected we might still not have the location finalised - right from the start, we knew nobody (except as it turned out the picnic people) had visited either of the two possible locations and that meant some question marks around details and timings (we were now running at over 30 emails with Cat). This is just part of the ‘fun’ when sorting it all quite so close to the date!]

But, ceremony location excepting, we were finally there - at the time for… packing.

We’re never very good at getting off for places on time, but here there was a bit more stress than you even have when you need to catch a plane or ferry. The checklist for stuff to take eventually reached three A4 pages. Extension leads, a button-down top, midge repellents, tick tweezers, yes, yes and yes. Plus rather a lot more.

So shortly after lunch (we’d unrealistically been aiming for mid-morning) on one Saturday in September, it was time to be off.

We were eloping to Scotland.

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Extra shots

• The Scottish midge forecast
  https://www.smidgeup.com/midge-forecast/

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Credits

Pictures from Sarah are marked as copyright of Fotomaki Photography, and are used with permission. All other photos are our own.