A Wee Wedding in the Woods at Loch Ard

WFIL readers Fiona and James were just about to make some concrete bookings for their wedding when Covid put their plans into a spin. They embraced the opportunity to think outside of the box, and were married in a socially-distanced, Humanist ceremony in Loch Ard Forest in September.

Like many of you reading this, Fiona and James are planning a bigger celebration at a later date, once it’s safe to do so. And they have no regrets whatsoever about tying the knot in a simple way that truly reflects them as a couple meantime. Something tells us you’re going to feel more than a little inspired by their outlook…

How did you two meet?

In 2013, I (Fiona) was starting to get more into cycling, and I’d heard about a bike polo tournament that was happening near my work one Saturday.

I walked around on my lunch break to check it out, and James was there playing with the Glasgow Bike Polo team. I must have looked a bit lost, as James came up to me and starting explaining the rules to me. He obviously made quite an impression on me (or maybe it was just the neon pink knee-high socks him and his teammates were wearing!) as we scheduled our first date for later on that week.

Where did you draw inspiration from for your wedding?

I have followed We Fell In Love for a few years, since my sister’s wedding was featured on it back in 2015. When I first got engaged, I definitely fell into the trap of following a million different wedding blogs, which seemed to all be pushing a million different things on me which I really didn’t feel I needed in order to have a special and memorable day!

I eventually purged 99% of them from my Instagram, as especially once covid hit a lot of them just seemed really out of touch, pushing these elaborate, expensive, over-the-top weddings that were completely disconnected from the actual reality of what was going to be possible during covid times.

WFIL has been so great at keeping the Scottish wedding community informed during these crazy times, but also for bringing joy to my feed with both big and small weddings that just feel REAL.

Tell us more about your day…

So it’s safe to say that this probably isn’t originally what we had visualised for when we got married! We were about to start making some concrete bookings for our wedding when covid hit, and it became clear to me quite quickly (I am a total public health nerd and read all the covid modelling data!) that this crisis was likely going to be impacting our lives for months or years to come.

We didn’t feel like putting off our plans to get married indefinitely, and so we started thinking about the idea of an outdoor micro ceremony (and doing a bigger wedding/party later). The more we thought about it, the more it really felt like the right decision for us. We had joked together for years about eloping, but it didn’t feel right to not include our closest family and friends in the day (and also we didn’t want to incur the wrath of each of our mums had we snuck off in secret to elope!) so a micro wedding with a teeny tiny guestlist actually struck a nice balance for us. We are also both very outdoorsy, and we wanted to keep the infection risk as low as possible, and so getting married in the middle of a forest suited us just nicely (and bonus: the venue was free!).

If anything, the way the pandemic turned our lives and our plans upside down was actually quite liberating. It gave us the freedom to toss the rulebook out the window, and we got to choose our favourite elements we wanted to include in the day (beautiful flowers, beautiful scenery, and as many dogs as possible including our 13 year old rescue dog Ciara as flower pup!) whilst patching anything that didn’t feel right for us.

With everything else stripped back, the ceremony really was the focal point of our day, and our celebrant Kathryn was absolutely fantastic at working with us to create a ceremony which was truly and totally “us”. Our ceremony was completely personalised, it was at points tear-jerkingly sentimental and at other points utterly hilarious! We included so many elements that were important to us and our families, including drinking from the quaich, my dad came up and gave a speech with some advice for our married life together, and James read a poem written by his Grandma before her own wedding day (his Grandma sadly passed away in March 2020 so this was a beautiful way to honour her). Everyone has commented on how beautiful and funny and personal our ceremony was, and it was an absolute joy to have Kathryn up there with us to start us on the next step of our lives together.

What an amazing spot you chose for it!

We were married in Loch Ard Forest. Pretty much everyone who has seen any photos of our wedding has commented on just how beautiful the setting was. Their follow up question is usually “but how on earth do you even get married in a forest?”.

So, it turns out that it is in fact super easy to get married in a forest! We knew we wanted somewhere outdoors, in nature, and a forest seemed like a good idea as it would give some shelter from the rain if the weather decided to be particularly Scottish.

We took the dog up on a walk to Loch Ard near Aberfoyle, and found the perfect little woodland clearing in the forest surrounding the loch, with a slightly raised area for us to stand on in front of our guests, and a babbling stream nearby to provide the soundtrack. The land is owned by the Forestry Commission, and so I sent an email to the local district office asking for permission to get married there, which they granted pretty much straight away. It really was that easy!

There were a few, very reasonable conditions we were asked to follow (such as not throwing confetti), and like that we were able to get married in the most beautiful setting, and organising the venue had been completely stress-free!

How did the flowers tie in with the setting?

Rachael at Blooms always makes the most stunning, most imaginative designs with her flowers, and so there wasn’t really any other contenders when it came to who would create the flowers for our day.

We kept it pretty simple and natural, and as we’re saving all the proper bridesmaid stuff for the big party in the future, we just had a medium-sized bridal bouquet for myself, a buttonhole for James, and some corsages for our wee dog Ciara’s jacket (she had the very important role of flower pup on the day!).

I gave a rough idea of styles and colour scheme, but otherwise, just let Rachael work her magic, and she created such beautiful, creative floral arrangements for our day.

We love your outfits!

So when we decided we were definitely going to go ahead with a micro wedding this year, it was about three months before the day and we were still in lockdown so all the bridal shops were still closed! Even then, the thought of going to bridal shops under covid restrictions, with limited entourage allowed and us all masked up, didn’t appeal to me at all. So instead, I ordered a bunch of stuff online and tried them on in my sister’s back garden!

I had actually originally decided on another dress which was a very different style from the dress I eventually settled on. The first dress was a beautiful oyster-coloured satin and was extremely elegant, however, I spotted a blue-grey tulle Needle & Thread dress pop up in the ASOS sale and I decided to order it and try it on “just in case”. Once I’d tried on the Needle & Thread dress, whenever I pictured myself marrying James, I saw myself in that dress, and I so I knew it had to be the one! I sent back the satin dress (thank goodness for free returns!) and the blue-grey tulle dress was it for me. I’ve had so many people ask me if it was a vintage find or maybe an heirloom, but in fact, it was less than £200 in the sale!

I accessorised the outfit with a headpiece and custom earrings from Etsy, a tartan shawl from The Tartan Blanket Company, and some steel grey Timberland boots (very practical for a woodland wedding!). I’m happy to say that absolutely every item from my outfit I have either already worn or I intend to wear again (even the dress, as it’s not a super bright white colour I feel I can probably get away with it at a fancy function in the future!).

James’ outfit was gathered from a variety of suppliers over a number of years, and he had pretty much everything he needed by the time we got married ourselves. His Grandma’s name was Maclean, and so he wears Modern Hunting Maclean kilt which is a beautiful green colour (and happens to be perfect for a forest wedding!) with a charcoal grey tweed jacket.

James wore cufflinks which his late grandfather received as a 21st birthday present back in 1953, and then he gifted to James for his 21st birthday in 2008.

We decided to hold off on doing the full wedding party thing and having bridesmaids dresses etc until the big party further down the line. It was actually really lovely though, as each of my girls wore an outfit which was very “them” and reflected their own personalities. I did, however, gift them each a different tartan scarf on the run-up to the wedding (with a tartan either reflective of them or important to them in some way). It was really nice that they had that common thread that linked them together even with separate outfits on, and it linked them to me too with my own tartan shawl tying in.

Your photos capture the story of the day so beautifully! 

Alasdair (Watson Photography) is actually a good friend of ours from bike polo (he was actually at the tournament the day James and I first met!). His photos are absolute works of art and I still cannot believe that we are the subjects of photographs that are so beautiful!

But aside from being completely gorgeous, these photos also serve as a reminder as to the huge value and enrichment we receive from the creative arts industries, many of whom are self-employed, and should remind us all to keep advocating for further support for the people in these industries who have been hit so hard by the current crisis, and who are disproportionately being side-lined by current government support schemes.

How did you choose your filmmaker?

When we were wedding planning, I had multiple people tell me that their biggest regret about their own wedding was not having a video made.

As our day was pretty low key (we were keeping most of the big weddingy things and expenses for our big party down the line) it felt like quite an expense, but when we considered that our extended family and friends weren’t going to be there in person to witness us getting married, it seemed like the right decision. I am so so so happy we made that decision, as the films Boda made for us are so absolutely beautiful and capture the feel of our day just perfectly!

Were there any challenges along the way?

Obviously planning anything during a global pandemic comes with its own unique set of challenges! Covid cases had been reasonably low for a couple of months on the run up to the wedding, but a week or so before the big day cases started to rise in our area. We had originally organised to have a meal following the ceremony in a marquee we hired for my parents’ garden, with a number of infection control precautions in place, but the rule of six came into force just two days before our wedding and scuppered those plans!

Instead, we had a short, socially-distanced, covid-secure cake cutting ceremony and toast immediately after the ceremony, which meant we still got a little bit of time to chat and hang out with our guests (some of whom we hadn’t seen in real life since before lockdown) before everyone dispersed.

Our plan was to have a small, low-key, low-stress ceremony, stripping back all the faff and stress that we really didn’t need, and save some of the bigger, more complex weddingy things for later when we do the big party.

We found the idea of stripping a wedding back to the bare bones really liberating, but that’s not to say these decisions came totally easy. We had quite a lot of pushback from various family members, and some felt we were “compromising” rather than seeing what we were actually doing – making choices that felt right for us. We stuck to our guns and our “non-traditional” decisions though, and we’re so glad we did. Our wee day was just perfect, and on the day itself, everyone could see that it was absolutely perfect for us.

Any advice?


It might be scary, and it might ruffle more than a few feathers, but do what feels right for YOU as a couple! At the end of the day, you love each other, you’re going to get married and have a wonderful life together.

Do it your way, and all the other stuff doesn’t really matter in the end.

Honeymoon or minimoon?

We had a wee minimoon up to Assynt and Sutherland a couple of weeks after we got married, but our plans (post-covid) are to take a couple of months off work and go explore Chile and Argentina, including down into Patagonia.

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

I’m not sure there is one specific moment, as the whole day sort of blurs into one and flies by! I think we both really appreciated having so much time together as a couple on the day though, we weren’t running around stressing about table settings or getting up early for hair and makeup, or spreading ourselves thin across 100+ guests.

Also, the cake my sister made for us was literally the best cake I’ve ever tasted. I am not joking. It was a sticky toffee pudding in cake form and it was heavenly!

Check out James & Fiona’s amazing wedding trailer from Boda Productions below…

 

Can’t even begin to describe how full this has made our hearts feel! We hope you are feeling exactly the same way after reading about Fiona and James’ beautiful, liberating wee wedding!