A High Collar, Lace and Long Sleeved Jesus Peiro gown for a Glamorous Scottish Castle Wedding

What a gorgeous wedding I have to share with you today, and a most beautiful, modern bridal gown from one of my favourite modern-day wedding dress designers.

Natalie, a Procurement Specialist married Alistair, an Electrical Commissioning Engineer, on 24th November at Carlowrie Castle in Kirkliston, Scotland. These beautiful images were captured by photographer Jo Donaldson and the video below was created by the talented Ypod Films.

“It was important to us and our family to have a religious wedding, but for the service to be light-hearted and relaxed. We both love winter, but weren’t precious about particular dates. Likewise, we had no theme, or set colour scheme, but knew we wanted warm wintery atmosphere with some clashing elements.”

Film by Ypod Films

These nuptials oozed glamour all round – a tone set by the spectacular Jesus Peiro gown that Natalie disdovered at the wonderful Eleganza Sposa  bridal boutique in Glasgow. We are incredibly proud to recommend both dress designer and boutique through our beautiful new Little Book For Weddings – and especially delighted to see the bride visited Eleganza as they are a member of the Luxe Bride group – with whom I recently announced a formal partnership.

“I can’t tell you exactly why I picked it, other than as soon as I put it on I loved it. I had no idea what kind of dress I wanted, except something a bit different, but I wasn’t sure what that different was. Turns out ‘different’ was it. I also loved the idea of being able to clash dark nails and flowers with the pink, and that it was classic, yet contemporary. Really, I just wanted a dress that I felt me in, and not as if I was playing fancy dress as a bride.”

Images by Jo Donaldson

“Jo and Liam of Jo Donaldson Photography are fabulous, they are two of the nicest people ever. We had so much fun with them on the day. And the photos are just incredible. Kelly and Craig of Ypod Films were also brilliant – we hardly noticed them at all during the day. Our highlights video is a wonderful snippet of our day. We are so excited to get our full edit.”

Award winning wedding hair and makeup artist Laura Gray was the lady responsible for beautifying everyone on the morning of the wedding.

“I wore my all-time favourite perfume – Jo Malone’s Dark Amber and Ginger Lily.’

“My shoes were by Ego. I wanted shoes to match the pink in my dress, but finding non-leather shoes in that tone proved very difficult. They were the biggest bargain of the wedding.”

“The bridesmaids dresses from ASOS were altered by our local tailor in Stockbridge. He changed the neckline to suit each of the bridesmaids and added a ribbon belt.”

“Neither of us were brought up in Edinburgh, but it is very much our home now. We couldn’t think of a more wonderful place to get married than St Columba’s, our beautiful local church. Reverend Benjamin has a marvellously warm, friendly and relaxed manner; the service he delivered was perfect, he spoke beautifully and had all of us laughing repeatedly with his brilliant sense of humour.”

“We met through a mutual friend in 2009 whilst Alistair was doing his apprenticeship and I was studying law at university in Glasgow. In June 2016, we were on holiday in Italy – visiting Milan, Florence and Rome.”

“In the middle of the trip Alistair proposed in Florence on a private roof top terrace overlooking the River Arno and the most beautiful skyline view of the city. We were engaged for just under a year and a half before we got married.”

Natalie’s father Stephen accompanied her down the aisle to the sound of Highland Cathedral…

“This was my Grampa’s favourite song; it was special to walk down the aisle to this with his wedding ring tied into my bouquet.”

The couple’s rings were from their local jewellers, Annie Smith in Stockbridge, who crafted the rings from scratch.

 

“Our readings included 1 Corinthians 13 and St Matthew 1: 4-6 read by Reverand Abeledo. We also had a passage from The Alchemist read by one of our bridesmaids, Riona.”

“We picked our florist, Planet Flowers, due to their creativity – nothing was out of the question. We changed our minds a few times regarding flowers and décor – they were brilliant with this and even designed a mock table for us to ensure we were completely happy with the design.”

“We served gin and tonics, champagne and beer on the journey to the Castle via a bus we hired from The Big Red Bus company – Tasha, one of our bridesmaids, made a brilliant playlist for the journey. The party well and truly started on the bus.”

“The bus journey to the castle was really special; we were just married and it was wonderful to enjoy that time straight after with our friends and family celebrating.”

“Our reception was held at Carlowrie Castle. Wow! The driveway and grounds had us both excited before we even stepped inside. And inside was even more magical than we could have expected. We knew it was the perfect venue for us almost instantly.”

“We loved the idea of complete privacy and exclusivity. The orangery, lounge, piano room and bedrooms are ridiculously beautiful; it was lovely for us to give our friends and family such wonderful rooms to stay in during our wedding celebrations.

“We were wanting to make the most of the castle and we decided to host our rehearsal dinner in the piano room the evening before the wedding – it was a last-minute decision, but one of the best.”

“Jen, the General Manager at Carlowrie, was incredible. From recommending suppliers to ensuring everything ran perfectly on the day – she definitely played a huge role in our day being so wonderful.”

“For favours, we supplied bottles of pre-mixed cocktails with unusual ingredients from notonthehighstreet.com.”

“Again, we picked supplier Liggy’s Cakes due to their creativity; it was amazing to be able to sketch our cake with them. We had a four-tier cake; vanilla and bramble jam, chocolate and raspberry, toffee and salted caramel and the top layer was a vegan lemon cake.”

As the daytime drew to a close, the couple took to the dance floor to commence the evening celebrations in true romantic style – the band Keeper Lit provided live entertainment.

“Our first dance was to ‘With Me’ by Sum 41 – it was an acoustic version played by our band.”

Words of Wedded Wisdom

“I got so worked up about all the small details in the run up to our wedding – I spent the last four months in a state of constant worry. For all those brides to be currently panicking – stop! It will all be perfect on the day. It might not be the perfect you planned – but it will be perfect for your day. I was convinced any wrong detail would ruin the day, it didn’t! The date on my table plan was wrong – it was only when I saw photos the day after I realised and the napkins were a slightly different shade than I had imagined, but it didn’t matter at all.”

“None of my guests were distraught they had silver cutlery over gold. I spent weeks upon weeks shedding tears over the lack of gold cutlery available

We didn’t set a firm budget, but we definitely spent a lot more than we had anticipated. Although it seemed like a lot of money, it was all worth it.”