STARS AND THE NIGHT SKIES – A CONSTELLATION THEMED CASTLE WEDDING

A shared love of stars and night skies led Amanda and Rikki to plan their winter wedding with a constellation theme. And as luck would have it, their venue – a 19th century castle in South Lanarkshire – had just been refurbished with a blue, bookcase-lined ballroom. Add in a few Harry Potter references, book page bouquets and an amazing DIY sweetie table, and it was an absolute dream of a day.

How did you two meet?

We first ‘met’ on OkCupid when I saw Rikki’s profile and decided he was cute and sent him a message. He actually hadn’t been using his profile in a long time and had only been stopped from deleting it altogether because he couldn’t remember the password to get into it. Thankfully he had it set up that any messages were also emailed to him so he got my message and responded. We chatted by email then Blackberry messenger and Facebook messenger for four weeks before we met for the first time and we’ve been together ever since!

What inspired your day? 

We both have a shared love of stars and night skies. For his first birthday that we were together, I hired the planetarium at the Glasgow Science Centre for a private show. A mistake by the Science Centre meant we’d been booked in on a day they were actually closed so we had practically the run of the place and he likes to tell people I hired him the whole Science Centre. It seemed like a no brainer for these things to play a key part in our day.

We bought our blue sequinned tablecloths to brighten up the whole room and try to take a step away from the more traditional plain white tablecloths and a step beyond table runners and such. A last minute purchase of silver glittery charger plates really set off the table settings.

While the overall theme was of stars and constellations, as a Hufflepuff4lyfe I couldn’t resist sneaking a couple of references in there. As well as our bouquets and the girls’ bags for the day, we handmade star shaped book paper confetti from my favourite chapters to scatter on the tables alongside the small scatter crystals to go with our centrepieces.

We had one major DIY project for our wedding which was our sweetie table. This grew arms and legs from its original idea but in the end was the totally OTT thing you can see in our pics. The back board was a ‘scrap’ from B&Q which we cut out the hole for the 3D printed moon and the pinholes for the fairy lights, painted then spraypainted the whole board and kitted out a TV bench from Ikea with the strip lights and stuck it to the back board.

We even had all our sweets themed – Mars Bars, Milky Ways, Galaxy, Galaxy Caramels, Starburst, Haribo Starmix, Flying Saucers, Space Dust, Milk and White Chocolate Stars. This proved to be just as big a hit with the big kids as the actual kids in attendance.

Once I had decided on having Harry Potter book page bouquets for the bridal party and we’d decided to have the vases as our centrepieces and aisle decorations, we quickly realised that flowers weren’t super important to our day but we had some flowers included as part of our package with Cornhill. We’d met and spoken to Fiona at Bells and talked about our day and the feel we were looking for. Personally, I’m not really a fan of the more traditional top table arrangements so was looking for something a bit different. Fiona was more than happy to work with us to find something that worked and she came up with the three mirrored vases. We talked about our colour scheme… and settled on blue/purple flowers. We also discussed artificial versus fresh and Fiona put together an artificial arrangement with some stunning blue roses – she said that if we didn’t like them we could revert back to fresh but the artificial were so lovely and in keeping with everything else, we never looked back.

Edwina at Rosewood Cakes met with us and talked through what we wanted and she put together a very rough plan/design. We felt confident enough to put our complete trust in her that she’d be able to pull it off and she went absolutely above and beyond our expectations!

We had a custom stationery design created for us to fit our theme from Skinny Malink.

Tell us about your venue…

I had actually already looked at and crossed Cornhill off my list of possible venues during one of my mammoth Google sessions where I think I looked at every venue possible in the west of Scotland. What I didn’t know was that the pictures I saw were of the ballroom before their renovation. As soon as I saw the new ballroom with the blue walls and bookcases, I was sold. It was a world away from all the usual beige/cream walls of most venues I was seeing.

It ticked all our boxes – it was in the country surrounded by stunning scenery, a hotel as well so we could have some of our closest friends and family stay there, they gave fantastic packages and the staff were just a dream to work with – so willing to do as much as they possibly could to make sure our day was everything we wanted!

Rachel Middleton, our celebrant was just incredible from start to finish, we received so many comments on how amazing our ceremony was and how personal she made it.

We love your dress! 

I wore the big princess gown. I’m only 5’3 (and plus size) so wasn’t sure at first how big dresses would look on me and knowing that most sample sizes aren’t exactly big girl friendly, I was nervous. I visited a couple of places to try on dresses and had wonderful experiences at both (Gwennes Bridal in Broxburn and Wedding Wise in Barrhead), and saw a couple of dresses that I loved and felt great in but it was at the SECC wedding show that my mum and I both spotted this gown at the same time, under a spotlight to really show off the sparkle netting a couple of layers below. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to try it on.

There was an option for a blue version of the dress and it seemed like it would be perfect for our stars and constellation themed day so I was desperate to see it in person to see how the blue showed and looked for real. The only problem was that not a single shop in the whole of Scotland had this blue dress as a sample. I eventually found a shop down in Newcastle-Under-Lyme which was the most northernly stockist of Allure dresses which had a blue sample. I was so close to just ordering in the blue but in the end I just didn’t trust the monitors to show the true colour and given it was such a big order, I needed to see it for myself.

My lovely parents came with me to head down there to see the dress in person and be able to make a decision on the colour of the dress that I wanted. I’m so glad I did and the store was kind enough to let me pop in on a busy Saturday to check it out because as beautiful as it was it just wasn’t what I wanted if I was going to have a coloured dress, so ivory it was.

My next issue was the beautiful (but large) embellishment on the dress, I’m not a very blingy person so it felt too much for my personal taste/style but Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo were fantastic, they had a stock of belts in which I found what was later put onto my dress and just finished it off perfectly. I also got my gorgeous cathedral veil with pearls and crystals from BBB and my starry necklace from Swarovski.

I had a gorgeous hairpiece made just for me, in keeping with the theme, by the incredible Melancholy Magpie who also made a pair of matching shoe clips. My blue shoes were ones I already owned and changed up a bit for the day (I removed a big beaded bow from them and some ribbons) and were finished perfectly with my clips.

My final bit of colour was my evening shoes – metallic silver/purple light up Sketchers! They were so fun and comfy to dance the night away!

Both my Maid of Honour and our Junior Bridesmaid wore matching dresses from Belsoie. Both girls carried Harry Potter book pages bouquets, Stefani (MoH) had a star hair pin and Charlie (Junior Bridesmaid) had a galaxy hair bow.

The girls were gifted Harry Potter themed bags to carry anything they wanted with them on the day – Stef got a clutch of a Hogwarts Letter and Charlie a little bag and matching purse of Hedwig.

As his wedding gift I bought Rikki’s kilt from Slaters in a tartan only available for purchase – Highland Storm. We rented the rest of his outfit, along with the best man and fathers of the bride and groom, who all wore Scottish Spirit.

How did you choose your photographer?

We knew that we wanted two photographers to give us the best shot at being able to capture ‘everything’, but rather than only look at teams we focused on finding someone whose style fit what we were looking for. Neither of us are particularly confident or comfortable having pictures taken at the best of times so the notion of having those stuffy, posed wedding pictures filled us with a sense of dread.

Heather and Cheryl (Canvas & Peach) were fantastic, so much fun to have around on the day but they were also so professional and got everything we wanted to be captured, captured. We have received our pictures back and are just in love with them all and all the small moments we don’t even fully remember that they captured for us to look back on again and again.

Having Heather and Cheryl with us on the day was great, there was no stress, plenty of fun and laughs, and the time with them gave us a little breathing space in an otherwise crazy (but awesome) day and the way they shot gave us privacy as well as company for that brief respite in the midst of the day.

What was your first dance song?

Our first dance was ‘What A Diff’rence A Day Made’ by Dinah Washington and the Belford Hendricks Orchestra. I’ve loved this song for a long time but mostly listened to the Jamie Cullum version. I’ve always been a fan of old school music and while agonising over songs for the whole wedding, I think I listened to every version of this song available on Spotify and just loved the orchestra, particularly the strings. It just felt like a perfectly dreamy song to dance to.

I originally wanted our first dance to be to a song from a musical but couldn’t find just the right one to work for us. I managed to sneak one into our signing music – ‘Never Ever Getting Rid of Me’ by Sara Bareilles, seemed appropriate as we made it all legal!

Honeymoon or minimoon?

We had a short four day minimoon to Budapest the week after the wedding. With it being January it was bloody freezing but beautiful and the trip was finished in style with a gorgeous evening dinner cruise up and down the Danube on our last night.

Any advice?


Trust your gut, decide what you’d like and stick to it as far as possible but be as flexible with your vision as possible – you never know when circumstances will change mid way through your planning and you might need to rethink some of your choices.

Have a discussion with your other half at the beginning of the planning process and see what is a priority to each of you and the budget you’re hopeful/willing to spend on each. Understand that prioritising some things over others may mean compromising on less important things.

Also don’t be afraid to admit when something isn’t working or isn’t really what you wanted. We cancelled a string trio we had booked, not because we no longer liked them, but we realised they just didn’t fit in with the rest of our day.

Why Scotland?

I actually lived in California for two years just before we met so had always thought I’d like to go back there to get married in Golden Gate Park but in the end we had family here that wouldn’t have been able to make the trip so it just made sense to get married here in Scotland.

What’s the one truly unforgettable thing about your wedding day?

How much we laughed and had fun. We had so many of our guests comment that the day felt so relaxed and chilled, no feeling of being shuffled from thing to thing throughout the day.

Love the way Amanda and Rikki have carried their love of stars (and Harry Potter!) through their day. And those light up shoes are ace! Huge congratulations to you both and thanks for sharing your day! x