Wedding planning and Scottish Castles

Couples have been coming to Scotland to get married in enchanting Scottish castles for decades. But personally I have seen a marked increase in castle weddings since Madonna and Guy Ritchie held their wedding in a Scottish Castle at the end of 2000. All the hype and media attention beamed images of their wedding around the world and really showed how glamorous and magnificent our Castles and fortresses are and what stunning wedding venues they make! Of course, for my own business it helps that I’ve photographed numerous Scottish Castles both for magazines and publishing houses as well as weddings, so many people connect my name with this type of photography even before they’ve seen any of my photographs. I sometimes even receive bookings based purely upon my reputation from couples who say they don’t feel it necessary to see any images before booking as they don’t think I would get published so extensively if I wasn’t one of the best. I must say that this is very good for my ego, but I would still recommend looking through my work before booking me, lol.

As a wedding photographer in Scotland, and as you know from previous blog posts, I’ve had families coming across from the States, France, Italy and a little closer to home Ireland in recent years to get married in a Scottish Castle. This summer will be no different, and this week I’ve met up for pre-wedding consults and engagement shoots with brides and grooms getting married at Melville Castle, Dalhousie Castle, Edinburgh Castle and Blackness Castle.

Yesterday, I was with Karen and Daniel who are getting married at Melville Castle on June, 25th. Karen lives in Ohio, USA, and has been incredibly busy planning a magnificent wedding from afar. Daniel lives a little closer to home down in Reading. A lot of Karen’s planning and prepping has been done online but she was over this week meeting up with many of her wedding suppliers and vendors.

It was several months ago I first met Karen and Daniel. They were in Scotland looking for a venue and had visited Melville Castle coincidentally at the same time I was doing a photo shoot there. They fell in love with the castle and booked it for their wedding day. After making all the booking arrangements with Arlene they caught sight of one of my wedding albums and had a look through, immediately falling in love with the photography. Arlene spotted Karen picking up one of my business cards and told her that the Edinburgh wedding photographer whose album she was looking at happened to be the one who was outside photographing Hamish and Casper. So they made an appointment to meet up with me the following day.

We met up in, what is normally, a quiet hotel for a coffee and a chat. But as we were sat at a table looking through my sample albums two coaches full of Chinese tourists drew up and exited at the hotel entrance. The Chinese visitors all then piled straight into the hotel and as there was so many of them began to swarm through into the lounge area where we were sat. When they saw the three of us sat looking through wedding albums they all gathered around our table and started looking at them as well over Karen and Daniel’s shoulders. I’m not joking, but there must have been about two hundred of them! If that wasn’t bad enough they then started taking out camera’s and taking photos of my wedding albums! Well I was very embarrassed I can tell you but fortunately Daniel and Karen saw the funny side of it and we were able to have another laugh about it yesterday. I told them in all the years I have used that particular hotel that was the only time I’d ever experienced anything like that! And I’ve never had it happen again either, lol!

Karen won’t be back in Scotland again before the wedding day so we had a chat about their day’s photography, album design and a few other things, then did a half hour photo shoot, with Melville Castle’s general manager complaining about how come, as I am there so regularly, I’ve never done a photo session with him? Hmm…I have a slot next Wednesday afternoon ;)

Anyway here’s a couple of photos from yesterday and if you check back in June I’ll post a few from their wedding too. The next wedding show at Melville Castle is March 28th if you want to come along and meet up with me and see some albums and have your photo taken with the general manager!