A Fairytale Inspired Castle Wedding With Scottish + Dutch Traditions + a Bride in Clogs

When the bride sports sequinned socks with a pair of clogs you know you’re in for something special. It’s a real pleasure to whisk you up north, deep into the Scottish countryside, to indulge in a real fairytale of a wedding.

On 11 August 2018 Ashley, a freelance designer in graphics and digital design wed Marco, who works for a health and fitness charity in the majestic, medieval Neidpath Castle, Peebles, Scotland. The couple were inspired by the beauty of the surrounding countryside and mountains, keeping to a natural, botanical style of leaves and flowers. Scottish thistles and Dutch tulips represented each of their heritages and a traditional hand-fasting ceremony bound them together in their non-religious Celtic ceremony.

Film Sugar 8

Eileen Dunn at Sugar 8 recorded the day on film, and inspiration for the colour scheme was taken from the countryside and Marco’s Grey Stewart kilt.

“Eileen was lovely, such a pro. She slipped in and out of the shadows so seamlessly whilst filming that most of our (most camera-shy) guests didn’t even notice she was there. Professional, personable and an undeniable talent, her teaser trailer had us feeling like rock stars and our families shedding a few tears! We were mostly inspired by our beautiful location for styling and decorations. Our venue really spoke for itself.”

Photography by Photography Glitter & Twigs

On the day, the bridal party were made-up by Caroline Watt Makeup + Beauty.

“She truly is an artist. She had me and the rest of the girls looking gorgeous. I’ve never felt more beautiful and I loved watching my wee granny being pampered and made up on the day. My make-up lasted the entire day to perfection.”“Caroline had given me some complexion care advice pre-wedding which not only created a better base for her to work with, but has really improved my skin in the long run! Totally, totally delighted I was able to book her for our wedding as she does book up fast!”

Ashley chose to have a bespoke gown designed and made for her. She worked with Scottish designer Gemma Sargent to create this Princess dress with a full, frothy skirt and dainty plunging bodice layered over a lacy bralette. I love the idea of the removable skirt which transformed the look into a sexy style, fantastic for the evening party.

“I had a bespoke dress designed specially for me and I LOVED it. I’d tried on a few dresses in The Netherlands and Edinburgh and although a lot of them were absolutely stunning I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. As a creative it’s kind of in my blood to imagine all the little details. I think I’d already designed what I really wanted in my head so I kind of knew I would never find my dress in a store off the rack.”

“I searched online and sent out emails and finally met Gemma. She has her own studio in the heart of Edinburgh and works with her clients to create unique wedding dresses, from the initial sketching stage to helping you and your maid of honour practice getting you into your dress pre-wedding day!”

“I really wanted to have the full princess dress but did not want to compromise on dancing the night away at our evening reception ceilidh! I felt beautiful in my dress – so much so that I wore it twice! We had a second reception in The Netherlands for our Dutch family that couldn’t make it to Scotland and I LOVED getting it back on. I actually plan to wear my bralette and slip dress again, together and with other combinations of clothes. This was also something I really wanted to have from my dress; something that I could enjoy and wear again and again.”

The bride was really keen to intertwine her Scottish heritage and Marco’s Dutch roots, so her choice of footwear was a pair of traditional hand-carved Dutch clogs from Kooijman, a quirky touch that I adore.

“As we were having such a Scottish day; kilts, bagpipes, (vegan) haggis, it was really important to me to do something to honour my new Dutch husband and family. So I went back to Google! I found an old story where in the past, instead of an engagement ring, Dutch men would propose to women with a pair of hand-carved clogs. They would leave them outside the door of the girl’s house and if she wore them the next day it would show him that she’d accepted his proposal to get married. The clogs would be carved with symbols of love, eternity and fertility and the bride would wear them on her wedding day.”

Truly personal rose and white gold jewellery was commissioned especially for the wedding day.

“I had a rose gold necklace made by a jeweller in Canada that I found through Etsy – CaitlynMinimalist. Each side was personalised with details of our wedding; the name and coordinates of the castle, the date and our names with a symbol for eternity.” 

“My earrings were a combination of Accessorize and a little local jewellery shop in Amersfoort. I wore Pandora bangles which had a mix of gold, silver and rose gold charms gifted to me over the years by Marco for anniversaries and birthdays. I also wore a mix of white and rose gold Pandora ‘wishbone’ rings.”

Ashley and Marco have a beautiful love story to share about how they met.

“We met in Rome in Italy, one of our favourite cities. I was there with my best friend (and maid of honour) Louise. I’d recently sworn off men altogether and we’d decided to have a girly week away full of culture, good wine and great food, so we inevitably, almost immediately bumped into a group of beautiful, tall, blonde Dutchmen who changed our plans. Marco says it was love at first sight and that he knew from the moment that we met we would see each other again, after Rome. He was right.”

“At first we lived apart, travelling between London where I was living and working and Marco’s hometown Elburg, a small village in The Netherlands, getting to know each other having mini-holidays. Eventually I moved to Amsterdam, cycled, made friends, learned Dutch and we started to build a relationship together without the aeroplane commute.”

“After a year in The Netherlands, we moved back to London together. Another couple of years went by and we made a visit to a travel shop and departed London for a six month trip, backpacking around the world. We’d spoken about getting married a lot through our travels and had been trying on some rings for fun. I remember trying on one particularly ridiculous fist-sized rock in Vegas which was nuts!”

“We stumbled across a design studio – Solitaire Jewellery – in Toronto, the last destination of our trip, run by a family of father and two sons who design and craft bespoke jewellery from ethically-sourced materials. We sat down on their couch surrounded by sparkly things and friendly faces and everything just fell into place. A couple of days, sketches and celebratory drinks in the sun later we’d decided on a design we loved and were headed home to Europe engaged with our bespoke ring arriving in the post a few weeks later!”

“We were engaged for a year whilst living back in Amersfoort in the Netherlands which gave us just enough time to plan a wedding and organise our families and international pals to all come together in one place for our handfasting.”

Marrying back in Scotland was important to the couple. They chose the castle not only for the breathtakingly beautiful setting and its exclusive use but because its proximity to Edinburgh would make it easy for friends and family to come from afar and enjoy all that the city had to offer.

“The beauty of the mountains, lochs and rich history of Scotland completely captivated Marco from the first time he visited from The Netherlands. Getting married in a medieval castle was like a dream for him and I loved him even more for embracing my culture and heritage! We wanted to be close enough to Edinburgh so that our international friends and family could enjoy the city as well as the Fringe, which is also why we decided to get married in August.”

“Researching venues was one of the first things we looked into as we knew that most venues would have a one to two year wait. We did a lot of our wedding research online and came across Neidpath Castle after a bit of Googling and just fell in love. Its crumbly stony walls towering over the edge of a small cliff looking over the river Tweed looked like a painting.”

“It was perfect, it felt remote and private but was still under a hour travelling from Edinburgh which would be an easy commute for my family and everyone staying in the city for the Fringe.”

“We could hire the entire building for ourselves, so it would be totally private for the two of us with our family and closest friends. We could bring in all our own vendors and decorate however we wanted which was really important so that we could make our day totally personal and unique to us!”

“As a small castle it was cosy and romantic and with the fires burning and candlelight flickering we felt like we’d stepped back in time into our own personal fairytale.”

As a designer, it was natural for Ashley to plan and style the weekend celebration herself.

“We wanted our day to be totally ‘us’ so organising everything ourselves was really important. I worked on all things creative, and handled all the contacting of carefully-chosen vendors and suppliers whilst Marco organised budgets, lists and timescales.”

“We enlisted (in our opinion) a total star team of vendors, suppliers and super-talented people to bring our day together. It’s so, so important to work with people you trust and are just as excited about your wedding as you are, especially when planning a wedding from abroad.”

“I cannot say enough how grateful we are to have met and managed to book everyone that made our day possible. Each one felt like part of our own wee personal wedding family. One of the first things we looked for (besides the obvious things we were looking for from each of our suppliers) was a quick reaction to our email conversations (within reason of course!).”

“It assured us that the individuals/teams we’d contacted were serious about working with us, committed and properly interested in being a part of our day. Again, being abroad, this was especially important to Marco and I.”

Whilst the bridal party prepared, Marco spend the morning with his best man and family to dress in traditional Scottish dress. His Grey Stewart kilt was the starting point for their look.

“Marco wore a full kilt set – Grey Stewart tartan with charcoal grey blazer, waistcoat and socks with a claret tie, all from Bowdens Kilts in Leith, Edinburgh.”

The ceremony was held in the Castle’s vaulted Laigh Hall, with the top of the aisle framed by a beautiful stone arch and a foliage garland. The bride entered on the arm of her father to meet Marco and marry in a very personal, hand-fasting ceremony.

“We walked down the aisle to ‘Highland Cathedral’ played by a piper – my absolute favourite tune from when I played the tenor drum in a pipe band as a teenager. It always reminds me of home. The power behind the melody combined with the richness of noise that can only come from the bagpipes always gives me a lump in my throat. I managed to hold back the tears that morning, but Marco (and a few of our guests) weren’t so lucky!”

“We had Liz Paxton of Peebles Registry perform our ceremony and legally marry us. She was fantastic. We had a meeting with her a couple of months before the wedding to practice the hand-fasting and tell her the story of how we met. She made us feel relaxed and confident that everything would be as we wanted it and we could personalise all the aspects. We were delighted that she was such an important part of our day.”

“We had the story of how we met, an explanation of the hand-fasting, which Marco’s brother and best man Wim explained in Dutch after Liz, and the (surprise) story of my clogs! Liz spoke about what it means to be married and love in general but beyond that we wanted to keep our ceremony simple, sweet and personal so didn’t include any readings.”

The rings were designed by the same Toronto team at Solitaire Jewellery who created Ashley’s engagement ring.

“We had our wedding rings designed to match my engagement ring which we had made in Toronto. We sent emails back and forward and agreed on a design that was sketched, rendered, crafted and sent to us from their studio in Canada to our home in Amersfoort.”

Immediately after the wedding, the newly-weds were able to escape for these gorgeous couple shots against the lush, green countryside, taken by Inga at Glitter & Twigs. I love the in-the-moment vibe and naturalness of these photographs; the couple look so radiant. For Ashley, these moments were some of her favourite of the day.

“When we met Inga for the first time she described herself as the ‘photography ninja’ and she didn’t disappoint. She felt like a friend we’d known for years and was always quick to reply to emails which was so important to us planning our wedding from abroad. She is professional, creative and a lovely addition to any wedding.”

“Not only did she capture our day beautifully she was on hand to help on the day, pulling petals from roses with our flower girls just before the ceremony. I think I’d found her through Instagram in the beginning, I loved her bright, light flooded style.”

“We wanted everyone to feel comfortable being around a camera on the day so didn’t spend too much time doing the traditional line-ups and instead asked Inga to spend more time catching people enjoying the day together, which worked hand in hand with her ‘candid-capture’ way of working!”

“Marco and I got to disappear off just the two of us… and our photographer and videographer! Even though they were with us they kept a little distance whilst capturing our first moments as man and wife. They let us just be together for a bit.”

“It was about an hour of total bliss right after our ceremony. We’d had a hectic week and a busy morning, all of the build up, work, preparations and nerves (and little mis-haps!) had brought us to this point and we were really married. Like actually properly adult-ing married. It was nice to just stop and have a bit of a laugh about that and celebrate without all our friends and family looking on.”

 

The final touch for Marco was his fresh green and white buttonhole, put together by Carol’s Creations. Carol also designed the bouquets and castle flowers.

“I really wanted to have a full, light and leafy waterfall bouquet. It smelt of eucalyptus and was decorated with the flowers of our home countries. There were a couple of different types of thistles for Scotland, white tulips for The Netherlands and roses for the years we lived together in London.”

“I love Carol. She was recommended to me as a friend of a friend and was brilliant. Her flower arrangements are unreal and like our other vendors, became one of our fave people to be in touch with pre-wedding for advice and creative ideas!”

“Our flowers were light, green and lush with a mix of Scottish thistles and Dutch tulips, representing the joining of our families. We had a few roses in there too for the years we’d made London our first home together. The rest of the colours (bridesmaids dresses, table dressings etc.) were led by Marco’s choice of kilt – Grey Stewart – which we saw by chance in the window of Bowdens Kilts in Leith, Edinburgh. It was so striking that we knew nothing could compare!”

The couple chose their wedding day fragrances together, opting for ‘his and hers’ scents.

“We wore Jean Paul Gautier Le Male and Classique. We tried lots of different scents but these were the scents we loved the most. We wanted to have perfumes we’d never worn before so that whenever we wore or smelt them again we would be reminded of our wedding day. We loved that we could have the “man and wife” fragrances of each other.”

Ashley has the most beautiful, glossy thick hair which she wore down in long waves with a few chunky Celtic braids. The final half up and half-down do was adorned with delicate fresh flowers to match her bouquet.

“Leanne at Babu Hair had the task of taming my massive mane of curls and did a fantastic job. She smoothed everything down then twirled everything back up to give me the sleek but natural look I was hoping for. After an unfortunate last minute cancellation of my beauty therapist Leanne also took total control of all my appointments running up to the wedding and made sure I was totally polished, plucked and pampered to a ‘T’ pre-wedding day!”

Food was very important to the couple, Marco in particular, and Edinburgh-based The Pantry provided a true banquet for the day, inspired by both Scotland and The Netherlands. The menu really does sound delicious.

“O. M. G. I don’t think we have ever had so much food that was so, so good. Unbelievable is how I’d describe The Pantry’s wizardry with food. They came up with a Scottish-Dutch mash-up menu that started with haggis doughnut canapés and ended with a build-your-own Cranachan with Dutch ‘Stroopwafel’ sauce.”

“They managed to put together a menu to please everyone, with a vegan option at every course for myself – the showstopper being a vegan-haggis moussaka which even the meat-eaters couldn’t get enough of! They put together an amazing cookie/candy bar for nibbling at in the evening next to our drinks bar which we dug into again the morning after for breakfast.”

“The Pantry not only delivered five star food for us, they also doubled as our on-the-day management. They spent the day before and morning of our wedding helping to set everything up for us – from moving around furniture and lighting candles to fixing any little issues that came up along the way. We’d put together an info-pack of vendors and times for when things should happen on the day and handed them the reigns and were so grateful for them. The team were fantastic with our guests and ensured the day ran super smoothly.”

“In the months leading up to our wedding we dealt with Jenn. She is so creative and passionate in her job. She’d send us messages and photos or Pinterest links with inspiration for our day as she saw them which we loved! It made us so excited to be planning our day and Ellen took the role of event planner on the morning of our wedding, calling everyone into place when they needed to be negotiated around the castle and checking in with us to make sure we were happy to move onto the next events of the day.”

The castle’s dining room had been carefully and thoughtfully styled by Ashley and Marco using lots of antique and re-purposed elements. The bride has shared details about how they created this fresh yet luxurious look.

“One of the weekends we were over in Scotland we spent a couple of dash and buy hours scouring the charity shops of Edinburgh. We bought lots of bowls and plates for the cookie and candy bar we were planning and a few mirrors and frames that we used as welcome signs, menus and tables plans. We painted the outer frames gold and the inside of of them with blackboard paint which I messily and sleepily wrote onto in the wee hours of the morning on our busy busy pre-wedding prep week! We had chalk pens that I used to write onto our mirrors as well. They were really effective in the end but the bar staff unfortunately placed one of them under a water tap which washed half of my work off even before the guests arrived! I think I managed half a second of devastation before returning to our little happy wedding cloud.”

“We had wisteria flowers from Ginger Ray hanging around the arch in the ceremony room where we were married. We also bought our guest book, gift/card ‘sack’ and some wooden ‘Mr & Mrs’ confetti from Ginger Ray which we used to decorate tables. We had some rose gold wired fairy lights dotted around the castle and hundreds of candles. We used white bunting and bubbles from Paperchase and natural confetti for throwing from Etsy.”

“I literally think of these two as my fairy-godmothers and as I keep saying for all our vendors, again, so so grateful for them, I cannot say enough how important it is to book up people you have a connection with and walk away from feeling happy and excited.”

“When I asked Marco what his favourite part of the day was he said he didn’t want to say the first moment he saw me in my dress at the ceremony as that’s a given. He starts with the moment he heard the bagpipes play ‘Highland Cathedral’, just before I made my walk with my dad down the aisle. He knows it’s my favourite song and the roar of it through the castle kind of broke him, in a happy, romantic kind of way. He then lists off little moments; when I revealed my clogs, the speeches, the food. The food… the unbelievable and never-ending FOOD!”

“Our furniture and tablecloths were hired from 88 Events and we decorated the back of our chairs with baby pink, single stem roses tied on with navy satin ribbons. Marco also spent a day sawing and painting wooden arrows to point guests in the right direction throughout the castle, which we didn’t use in the end as the castle had added this detail for us!”

“The week of our wedding was much busier than we could have imagined. A few hiccups meant we ended up spending one night sitting on the floor of our rented holiday apartment in our pyjamas sorting Scottish and Dutch treats (fudge, shortbread, tablet and mini-stroopwafels) into little favour bags we had bought at Paperchase. We had SO much food at our wedding, too much in the end, but everyone was still happy to take a favour home with them at the end of the night for a taxi-treat back to the hotels!”

The Pantry‘s team also created a decadent cake table which was thoroughly appreciated.

“The most important detail of our wedding cake was the taste. We love our food and after our venue, the catering was next on the list for booking. We had a meeting with Jenn Stout of The Pantry who was full of enthusiasm and ideas regarding our food and introduced us to the idea of having a ‘cake station’ instead of one large wedding cake.”

“We loved the idea of having a choice of flavours and a variety of tasty colours for our guests as apposed to the traditional white tiered fruitcake/sponge.”

“We had a black and white chocolate Oreo cake for Marco (he has been nicknamed the cookie monster for the sweet tooth he developed in London), a lime and coconut vegan carrot cake for myself and a vibrant pink Eton Mess cake (just because) which we topped with a personalised name topper from Etsy. They looked unreal and tasted even better – especially again for breakfast the morning after.”

The evening entertainment was an energetic ceilidh, and it kicked off with the newly-weds’ first dance to ‘The Gay Gordons’.

“We were originally going to have our first dance to Christina Perri’s ‘A Thousand Years’. We love the words and melody, and practised swaying in the house to it with moony eyes. Although we felt all dreamy and romantic swaying at home in our living room, we quickly decided that three minutes of swaying just the two of us could quickly get quite uncomfortable to the snaps and flashes of family cameras, and boring for guests so we decided to play that for our cake-cutting instead as ‘our song’ before we ended the last of the traditions and fell into our evening reception!”

“In the end we chose to share our first dance as ‘The Gay Gordons’, kicking off our ceilidh. We did the first round of the dance just the two of us, then our parents joined us followed by our siblings and the rest of the bridal party and then our friends. It was fun and relaxed and got everyone up and dancing from the beginning of the evening!”

“If we were to do it all over again we wouldn’t leave writing our speeches to the night before our wedding . I think we’d been putting them off a bit and were consumed with other things that week! As I wanted to do a speech in Dutch for Marco’s family and he in English for my family we had to write them, email them to each other and correct our second language mistakes! I remember being exhausted in the wee hours of the morning scribbling away and just wanting to enjoy the night with Louise chatting and singing our song – Celine Dion’s ‘Think Twice’ – ironically our childhood karaoke fave!”

Words of Wedded Wisdom

“We’d been given lots of advice after getting engaged. Mostly people said things like, try to savour the day, it will FLY by – true. We decided not to wear watches on the day and we’d handed over a plan for the day to our catering company, The Pantry, who doubled as our on-the-day-wedding events planners. They made sure things ran on time and helped with the setting up the day before and morning of the wedding which gave us a lot less to worry about.”

“We were also told that things will inevitably go wrong, whether small or large and to just try to go with it – also true! When things didn’t go quite to plan, from a small hair disaster pre-wedding to flowergirl shoes not fitting on the morning of the wedding to an unexpected (uninvited) guest crashing the evening ceilidh, we decided to just laugh it off.”

“I think if you just go into things with positivity and try to remember that, as clichéd as it sounds, the most important thing is that you’re getting to marry your other half. The rest just doesn’t matter in the end, and your day will not be better if you get upset about the things you cannot change.”

“Take a breath, smile and get back to savouring the day and celebrating with your husband and everyone you’ve asked to be a part of your day. All you’ll remember are the happy moments, the rest just becomes part of your story.”

I think I’m in love with this gown’s skirt; how much fun does it look to wear? Ashley, I love how you wove together your Scottish and Dutch heritages, especially those clogs, and I hope that your day has given many other brides lots of inspiration for styling their days. Thank you so much for sharing your celebration with us, and thanks also to Glitter & Twigs for these wonderful shots.

Ele xx