Two Grooms, A Best Dog + A Car Called Dorothy

We were both out with friends in Aberdeen in 1997! Brent had put money in a jelly bean machine which became stuck in delivery mode. Ever one to help, Julian put his hands under the machine to catch the sweets. Conversation was struck up and the rest is history. 
Julian proposed to Brent on a clifftop on the Moray coast with a Haribo jelly ring in 2016.

We were inspired by…

Vintage finds. 
We did as much as we could ourselves with the help of friends. The walls of the hall were draped with lengths of agricultural fleece and there were drapes of voile in the rafters to soften the effect of the originally sparse hall. 
A friend, Nicola Cousins, sewed around 800 bunting flags onto webbing strings. The tables were dressed with old books, hurricane lamps, flowers in hessian bound jam jars and tea lights with vintage buttons scattered along the hessian runner. 
Most importantly, Mike, our 15 year old Cocker Spaniel was ‘best dog’, resplendent in a tartan bow tie!

An old friend, Lesley-Anne McWhirter, of Urban Florals undertook the task of arranging the flowers. We wanted a vintage/village theme and the flowers were traditional and arranged in hessian-wrapped jam jars. There were also larger displays such as that in an old milk churn situated at the entrance porch to the hall. To achieve the ‘cottage garden’ theme, we also had locally grown flowers from Caroline Zanolini of Forbes Flowers Alford who provided buckets of Sweetpeas, Cosmos, Scabious, Cornflowers, etc. 
Lesley-Anne worked like the proverbial Trojan with the help of Catrin Fowden to arrange the displays and 48 jam jars for the tables. Without her hard work it would not have happened.
Thanks are due too to friends who let us into their gardens to plunder foliage!

Our stationery was homemade using the Bennachie tartan as a background
 and we used 
Brent’s vintage Morris Minor, called Dorothy
.

Tell us about your venue…

The venue was the King George 5th Memorial Village Hall in the rural village of Chapel of Garioch (pronounced Geerie!), Aberdeenshire. 
With the help of friends, we transformed an ordinary village hall into a magical space filled with flowers, lanterns, bunting and vintage finds sourced by Brent. 
The ceremony was conducted under a birch arch made by Julian and decorated by Lesley-Anne. The backdrop was the hill of Bennachie (pronounced Ben-a-hee!)
. A marquee was sited at the back of the hall, housing a whisky bar and gin and vodka bars, which proved very popular!

How did you choose your photographer?

Nicola was recommended by friends and perfectly captured our day. As there were two grooms we obviously didn’t need shots of hair, make-up, bridesmaids, etc! However, we met Nicola a couple of weeks before the wedding to take some “put you at your ease” photographs and on the morning of the wedding she came to the house to take some photos of us getting ready (largely drinking Champagne!), kilts being prepared, etc.

For the ceremony and reception we didn’t want formal photographs and here Nicola came into her own, circulating unobtrusively and capturing some great, candid shots of us and our guests as we enjoyed fizz and canapés on the lawn. Nicola captured our day perfectly, with photographs that will remind us of a great day for ever.

We love your kilts! Which tartans did you go for?

Brent wore the Bennachie Tartan and Julian the Ancient Colquhoun
. We had game bird feather and salmon fishing fly ‘buttonholes’ and deer horn sgian dubhs.