appearance by Emma Matthews; appearance by Greg Matthews.
Emma and Greg Matthews are both from Aberdeenshire in northern Scotland. Like most couples, they wanted their wedding to be a reflection and celebration of who each of them is as a person and who they are as a couple. After eighteen months of planning, Greg calls the big day, "the best weekend of [his] life."
According to Emma, a modern Scottish wedding has anywhere from 102 to 300 guests. However, most Scottish castles have ballrooms built to accommodate just 60 or so guests. The couple wanted a big enough venue to fit all 100+ of their guests in the ballroom and with enough rooms to keep the party going for two nights. The 200-year-old castle they landed on was just that, and all the wedding guests were able to stay on the grounds for the two-night celebration.
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Unlike traditional Scottish nuptials, the couple opted for a humanist ceremony. Yet, according to Brenda, the celebrant (officiant), "Scotland is one of the few countries in the world where humanist ceremonies are legal."
On the wedding day, the bride wore a borrowed veil, a blue stoned-ring, and her grandmother's old brooch on her bouquet. In a particularly Scottish touch, she also wore a lucky sixpence on her shoe.
"I think, overall, I was the one who cried the least," the bride explained. The groom, on the other hand, was all tears. He wore a kilt made of the bride's family tartan and as soon as he got to the front of the aisle, "the waterworks came on," he said.
"We didn't necessarily set out for our wedding to be like that but our heritage and our culture and the things we're used to seeing at family weddings and around us found its way in there."