Whisky & Woodland – A Scottish castle winter wedding

It was love at first sight when Anna and Tim saw Drumtochty Castle, an exclusive use venue set in an enchanting woodland glen in Aberdeenshire. Their November wedding was inspired by their love of the outdoors, whisky and bringing folks together to celebrate with delicious food and a whole lot of dancing. From their DIY stationery to their minimoon on Islay, there’s lots to be inspired by here!

How did you two meet?

We met in Aberdeen shortly after graduation from university, starting our first jobs as junior doctors together. Your first year out of medical school is a pretty powerful bonding experience! We became good friends over the course of a year or so, and after about 18 months grew closer. Tim was a bit reluctant to spoil our friendship at first, but I changed his mind after a bit of relentless persuasion! Eventually it was our shared love of all things geeky that brought us together. I think Tim realised I was the woman for him after powering through all three extended editions of the Lord Of The Rings in one sitting together one Sunday.

When we did decide finally to have a first date, Tim was going to cook me dinner at his place. However, as often happens to junior doctors, he was very late leaving work and I arrived at his house before him! I thought I had been stood up, but he appeared on the path behind me with bags of shopping so we made dinner together instead.

Share your proposal story…

We moved to London together for three years, but eventually decided our hearts were still in Scotland, so moved home. After five-and-a-half years together, Tim decided to propose.

He knew that he wanted us to design my engagement ring together (in collaboration with the wonderful Lava Jewellery in Peterculter), so chose to propose with a placeholder ring. Tim isn’t one to do things by halves though, so decided to make the placeholder. We were living in separate cities that year, so he spent his evenings learning how to make a beautiful woven knot ring from gold. The result was absolutely stunning, and such an amazing surprise as I had no idea he had been doing it!

Tim proposed on a weekend trip to the Ardnamurchan Peninsula on the west coast of Scotland. We climbed to the top of Ben Hiant and Tim got down on one knee with his beautiful home-spun ring. We then went back to our cottage and Tim prepared the same meal we’d cooked on our first date.

Tell us about your venue…

Scotland is our home, we love our life here and we couldn’t imagine starting our married life elsewhere. It has the most incredible scenery, the warmest people and our hearts are very much here.

We held our celebrations at Drumtochty Castle in Aberdeenshire, and were married at St Palladius Church in the castle grounds. Drumtochty has the most beautiful ballroom and social spaces, along with stunning surrounding scenery and a fantastic array of guest bedrooms. St Palladius was the icing on the cake with its amazing stained glass, and remarkably patient minister!

When we began planning, we decided on a few priorities that we would not compromise on, which included a number of things to make it as stress-free as we could for our guests. We decided early on that we really wanted an exclusive use venue so we and our guests could completely relax. We also knew many of our guests would travel long distances, so were keen to be married somewhere with plenty of accommodation on site as we remembered what a difference it made to us at our friends’ weddings!

We had originally planned to marry in Inverness as it’s an area that has been very special to us, and had viewed a few venues there. Everywhere we looked we could do almost exactly what we wanted, but not quite. We were on the verge of putting down a deposit at a venue near Inverness, but Tim wanted to look at one a bit closer to my family home in Aberdeenshire.

I couldn’t go with him to view Drumtochty because I was working, so he took my parents. They were all blown away by the beauty of the venue, the warmth of the staff and the absolutely stunning chapel. Tim texted me a mountain of photos and said “Hurry up and get home, I want to tell you all about where we are going to get married!”. And that was that! When I finally did get to visit, I may have had a small cry as we drove up the path and St Palladius first came into view. It really is like something from a fairytale.

We loved that Drumtochty was ours for the whole weekend, allowing us to have a relaxed evening with friends on the Friday. Every idea we thought of, the staff at Drumtochty (especially Nikki and Jill) said “Great, no problem, we love it” – nothing was too difficult for them, including their wonderful chef learning how to prepare kosher food for our Jewish guests.

What inspired your wedding plans?

We wanted our wedding to reflect the things that we love the most, which meant a heavy focus on good food, good company and great whisky. One of the earliest ideas Tim had was to put a different bottle of whisky on each table at dinner for people to try and to share with other guests, and we were so grateful that Drumtochty let us do this. It worked so nicely, and guests who didn’t know each other were moving around, talking, trading bottles. People who would never drink whisky normally tried it, and enjoyed it! We also had whisky glasses engraved with the date as our favours. It was fantastic to see our friends experiencing something we love. Tim’s sister handmade every place-setting name card to include a whisky menu with tasting notes and explaining why we had chosen each one.

We DIYed all of our stationery, which was quite an undertaking! I had decided I really wanted foiled stationery, which is phenomenally expensive. However, I discovered you can do foiling at home with the use of a laser printer and a laminator, so individually foiled over 400 pieces of stationery. It came out beautifully, but I did rather regret it after about 300 pieces! Overall it saved us around £400.

I made macarons to go with coffee and cake after dinner, which again was a lovely personal touch, but a very labour-intensive project. In the end I made somewhere in the region of 1000 shells to produce about 500 macarons. They went down a storm with our guests!

We’re pretty massive geeks, and included a lot of little elements that were special to us. We had a guest book with a tree of Gondor engraved on it, a photobooth with shields and swords for guests to use and Pratchett quotes on our orders of service and whisky menus.

I organised our flowers relatively late compared to everything else. We weren’t entirely sure we were going to have flowers initially, but several friends and family members convinced us we would regret not having them, and they were right!

I met Nicky at a wedding show at Drumtochty Castle, and she was extremely helpful. I had no idea what I might want, and Nicky took me through her approach to creating wedding flowers, which really helped me to imagine what would suit our needs. Nicky puts a lot of focus on texture and scent, as well as colour/visuals. She explained to me that she liked to use fragrant herbs (such as rosemary) in her bouquets, to give a scent memory to the occasion. She also told me that some of her brides had cooked with the herbs from their bouquets!

I wanted flowers that would reflect our colour scheme, and the season, and we settled on a burgundy and blush palette. Nicky selected seasonal flowers and the results were stunning. Our flowers included burgundy hydrangeas, avalanche roses, lisianthus and cotinus. I did cook with the rosemary from my bouquet while we were on honeymoon!

I scoured every blog I could find for weddings at Drumtochty to help me visualise what our day would be like, and We Fell In Love had featured a number of Drumtochty weddings. I’m fairly sure this is how I first came across our wonderful photographers! I also found Bespoke Hair and Beauty through We Fell In Love.

We had The Oysterman Events (seriously, check them out!) for supplemental canapes, the rest was catered by Drumtochty.

We love your dress! Tell us more…

I wore Eddy K style number EK1174 in ivory. The dress was a mikado satin ballgown with a beautiful long train, 3/4 length sleeves and lace bodice with delicate beading.

I tried on probably 50 dresses! I knew I wanted something romantic and with sleeves, and after a bit of trial and error we found a shape that really suited me, but I was struggling with fabrics. I really wanted a dress that did not have a “dividing line” between the bodice and the skirt, which proved surprisingly difficult to find.

I came across Eddy K as a designer through Pinterest initially! The EK1174 design had everything I had been looking for, and I fell completely in love with it. This became a bit of a problem because no Eddy K stockist in Scotland had the dress! In fact, the only shop in the UK with it in stock at the time was the Cotswold Bridal Boutique, 470 miles from my home! I thought this was ridiculous and tried to forget about the dress.

After months of trying and failing to find a similar dress, I eventually travelled to the Cotswolds and Emma at the Cotswold Bridal Boutique went out of her way to accommodate me to try on my dream dress. Thankfully I loved it just as much in person!

My shoes came from Rainbow Club, who produce beautiful and very comfortable wedding shoes. They also offer a dyeing service so you can recolour your shoes after the wedding!

My veil was from Joyce Jackson, a designer based in Wales. It was a Kensington chapel-length two tiered tulle veil with lace detail and beading.

My hair accessory was a gold laurel leaf design from Australian designer Stephanie Browne. Our wedding rings and my necklace were designed and created by the very talented Jacqui and Duncan Grant at Lava Jewellery in Peterculter.

Our bridesmaids all had dresses from JJs House, shawls from Etsy and their own shoes.

And what about Tim’s outfit?

Tim wore a kilt to our wedding, which as an Englishman surprised a few friends! Tim doesn’t have any direct Scottish connections, and so he selected a Grant hunting tartan to reflect his grandfather’s connection to Orkney. This is quite a colourful tartan, and he had it pleated to the stripe for quite a dramatic effect!

Tim wore cufflinks he inherited from his grandfather, his kilt-pin was a gift from his mother and his pocket watch was my wedding gift to him.

The lads all wore kilts hired from MacGregor & MacDuff, who kitted out many of our guests as well. They have such a flexible service with fittings available in London or great measure yourself guides, as well as delivering and collecting all the hire outfits from the venue.

How did you choose your photographers?

The day we got engaged, we sat drinking Champagne and made a list of the things that were most important to us for our wedding. Photography came first! We wanted photographs that would capture the essence of our day, whatever shape it took, and help us recall some beautiful memories. We decided on an autumn/winter wedding early and really wanted someone who would use the seasonal lighting as an asset rather than a challenge. Along with that, we’re both a bit awkward in front of a camera so knew we wanted to work with photographers who could make us feel at ease.

After we found our venue, I came across Christina and Jay’s work by searching for photographs of Drumtochty weddings. St Palladius church is an awkward space to photograph and I had seen a lot of “meh” photos of it. I was drawn to Elemental because of their fabulous photos of St Palladius and how beautifully they had managed to capture the church. I went on to view pretty much every photograph they had on their website and fell in love!

Jay and Christina share our love of the Scottish wilderness and are amazing at using the scenery, lighting and weather conditions to create fantastic photographs. They also seemed to have a wonderful ability to capture quiet moments and raucous good fun with equally good results. There’s a real magical quality to their photographs that I couldn’t resist.

The first time I met them, I knew they were our sort of people. We had some seriously good coffee and they answered some genuinely insane questions without batting an eyelid. I felt immediately at ease. We organised a pre-dawn engagement shoot with them as a bit of a “trial run”, and they produced some absolutely stunning photographs for us.

Our wedding photographs turned out better than I ever hoped. We felt totally relaxed and as a result have pictures ranging from beautiful and atmospheric, to completely hilarious. I love that our photos captured so many moments that we missed on the day, including one guest accidentally chucking their handbag instead of the confetti!

I feel I should point out that they did so much more than taking photographs, from cleaning mud off my dress to entertaining our flower girl during dinner. So many of our guests commented on how friendly and fun they were. Seriously awesome people.

There are no second chances when it comes to your wedding, so selecting wedding photographers is a huge act of trust. I am so glad we placed ours in Christina and Jay.

What was your first dance song?

We danced to a mash up of two versions of “I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)” – a slow cover by Sleeping At Last, morphing into the original by The Proclaimers. Mostly this was a bit of fun! The quiet, slow version is moody and romantic and who doesn’t love the original? It got all our guests on the dancefloor!

Bahookie were absolutely amazing at keeping the dancefloor full, and at leading the English contingent through some challenging ceilidh dances with very few casualties! Ross from Bahookie also helped me to set up our playlist for the “after party” when I found it difficult to work the sound system.

Were there any challenges along the way?

The saga of getting my wedding dress was probably the biggest stressor. After finally getting my dream dress, I hadn’t appreciated how narrow the church aisle was and ended up repeatedly tripping up my dad as we walked to the altar – it was quite funny!

Otherwise the only major disaster we had was discovering three weeks before the wedding that we had accidentally booked our Friday night catering (the night before the wedding) for the Saturday of the wedding! This was a huge problem because the proprietor had booked a holiday based on the dates we gave! We cannot thank Calum at the Bay Fish & Chips enough, as he organised someone else to cover him and run the catering for us at the last minute. He absolutely saved the day.

Did you manage to stick to your budget?

I wouldn’t say we formally had a budget, but we certainly spent more than we initially thought we would. Things like flowers and choosing to provide catering for the Friday night did push our budget up, but we wouldn’t change any of it.

Honeymoon or minimoon?

Minimoon! The day after our wedding, we spent the night at the Cromlix hotel in Perthshire, which was just sublime. They made us feel so special.

The following day, we took ourselves to Islay for a week of peace and quiet after such an enjoyable, but hectic few weeks. We stayed in a beautiful holiday cottage that very much resembled a hobbit hole in feel – cosy, comfortable, warm and inviting. Outside all week was freezing cold, blowing a hoolie and absolutely perfect for cuddling up in front of the fire.

We visited many distilleries, drank many whiskies and ate some fabulous food. We felt so welcomed and well looked after by the residents of Islay that we met on our travels. We’ll definitely be back!

Any advice?


Think about your priorities before you start looking for venues etc., or it’s easy to be overwhelmed. For example we wanted somewhere where as many of our guests as possible could stay on site or very nearby, which made it far easier to narrow choices down to a shortlist.

Don’t sweat the small stuff! Things will go wrong, and so long as you have the right people in the right places, almost anything can be overcome.

Lots of things seem super important in the lead up, but no one is going to remember if you tied the ribbon around a confetti basket the right way. So chill out!

What’s the one moment you’ll always remember?

Tim: There was a point in my speech when I turned to address Anna directly and, for a perfect moment, felt simultaneously that the two of us were alone together whilst being surrounded by the loving fellowship of family and friends.

Anna: It’s hard to pick just one, but for me it’s probably opening Tim’s gift before heading to church. Along with a beautiful pair of earrings, he had framed for me all of the “practice” engagement rings he had made while learning to make the ring he proposed with. It was such a heartfelt, precious gift and a testament to the labour of love that was the ring and our relationship. It turns out it is always possible to love someone just a little bit more than you already do.

What an incredible, atmospheric day! And we are loving all the dancefloor bants. Thanks for sharing your wedding story with us Anna & Tim!  x