An outdoor autumn wedding at Lindores Abbey Distillery, Fife

From Melissa’s gorgeous jumpsuit and cape to the (socially distanced) outdoor ceremony at Lindores Abbey Distillery in Fife, there is so much to love in today’s micro wedding.

Planned in just two weeks, after being rescheduled twice, Melissa and Nick decided to be bold and just go for it. We are loving their style!

How did you two meet?

We had met each other a few times because we had mutual friends in common. Nick was very shy when we met but plucked up the courage to ask for my number when we were both out on Christmas Eve. He said he wanted my number to ask what santa got me for Christmas.

What inspired your wedding plans?

Probably our personalities. We’re fairly laid-back people and we wanted a relaxed, laid-back day. We weren’t too fussy for a lot of wedding traditions, we just wanted to get married and have a good time with our friends and family. Covid altered our plans a bit but by that point many of the derailed plans didn’t feel as important.

Tell us about your venue…

We considered a wedding abroad but in the end Scotland was the right choice for us. Our Covid wedding wasn’t too far from what we originally planned, a few tweaks and letting go of what should have been!

We booked Lindores Abbey Distillery – in the courtyard for drinks reception, the cloister for the meal and the legacy bar for evening drinks. Lindores has so many great spaces and we wanted to make use of them all!

We loved it when we saw it. It was the first venue that we saw and nothing else could compare. It was so different being a working distillery and they were able to offer lots of different spaces for the wedding we wanted and dependent on the weather. We met the owner Helen McKenzie who showed us around the first time we visited and she sold it to us even more with her attitude that nothing would be too much bother, that we could have exactly the wedding we wanted.

We love your outfits! Tell us more…

My friend had been at a wedding fair and had seen my outfit on a runway show and told me I had to go and try it on because it was so ‘me’. And with that comment, I decided to have a look. I described what my friend had told me about the jumpsuit/cape. When the outfit was brought out to me I thought ‘is she having a laugh’, it looked like nothing on the hanger. But how right she was, this jumpsuit was me! But a much more glamorous version. I had seen a dress already that fitted exactly what I thought I was looking for; a jumpsuit with a cape was not on the agenda. I spent a lot of time figuring out what look I wanted to go for but in the end, I couldn’t say no to the jumpsuit and cape. It was too amazing a feeling when I put it on. It was not what I wanted but it was so right. I can’t believe I ever questioned it because looking at photos and when it all came together with accessories, I love it!

I had my headpiece designed and made by a friend’s mum who makes fascinators. I sent her some ideas from the internet of some of the designs I liked and she did a fantastic job keeping me updated on everything she was doing and checking I liked the progression of it. She dedicated so much time to getting it right, making all the silk flowers by hand. She amazed me with what she created, I didn’t really know what I was looking for, I just knew I couldn’t find it and she somehow managed to make it!

I also had decided a while before the wedding that I wanted to wear bridal gloves and found some vintage polkadot ones on Etsy. I also got a blue bag from Lulu Guinness as my something blue. I loved the red wax seal for the button to close it. I wore shoes I already had from ASOS, they were floral flipflop style shoes I had from holiday last year. As I’m almost the same height as Nick I didn’t want to wear heels and the shoes were perfect for the image inside my own head – they were also my something old. All my accessories were quite random, I could see people’s faces screw up when I told them about what I planned on wearing. I didn’t try everything on together until about a week before the wedding, I had a picture inside my head of how it would all look but didn’t really know if it would all fit together – it did and I loved it all!

Nick wasn’t sure initially what he wanted to wear for the day but after finding our wedding venue, which was a distillery, he felt that the kilt was the best choice. He wanted to add something a bit different to his kilt and decided that he would wear black Converse instead of wearing the traditional kilt brogues. It felt like they fitted in with the more relaxed wedding we were going for.

Your photos are gorgeous!

We found Suzanne through a blog feature and just really liked her relaxed style and felt none of her photos looked too posed. Suzanne was so helpful throughout the process and made us feel very comfortable. For our couples photoshoot she told us to forget that she was there and just walk around the abbey ruins but gave us a few pointers in between. And we just went with it. We feel she really captured the day as it was. We were never having a filmmaker so we were so pleased that the pictures told the story of our day so beautifully.

What was your first dance song?

Because of the Covid restrictions, we decided (if the weather allowed) to have sparklers and a song played outside in the courtyard for everyone to dance to. The weather was on our side all day and night and we went outside with sparklers and danced to Elvis – Jailhouse Rock. It didn’t go exactly as planned but we enjoyed it so much we did it twice!

Were there any challenges along the way?

Well Covid happened, need we say anymore… Our first date was planned for 6th June and we were gutted when it couldn’t go ahead, however we remained hopeful that we would still get married in 2020 so re-arranged for August. When the August wedding couldn’t go ahead, we decided that we would wait until April 2021. But after many discussions wondering if the wedding would be able to go ahead in April, we decided that we weren’t sure what we were waiting for – that Covid was still going to be around and felt it was unlikely that the guidance would change for the better.

Everything felt very uncertain apart from wanting to get married. We also felt that we had specifically chosen 2020 to get married because in 2020 we had been together for 10 years and we wanted to finish the year as husband and wife. So we thought let’s get married, to hell with Covid.

It was important to us to still have our closest family and friends at our wedding, to be able to celebrate with them, we wouldn’t have gone ahead with the wedding without them, and because the guidance seemed to be changing all the time we were worried that the day was coming where they would say that weddings and receptions couldn’t go ahead so we decided that we would speak to the venue and see if they had a date available soon. They had 17 October, which at the time was around two weeks away and we very excitedly decided it was the right day for us.

Strangely enough, when planning the wedding originally we had thought about an autumn wedding but because of Nick’s work, we decided that a summer wedding would be better for us mostly for the honeymoon following it. The week before the wedding we were very anxious as there were rumours in the media about Scotland going into another lockdown. And then came the announcement of the levels and not being allowed to sell alcohol in some of the levels – what a relief when they announced that weddings were exempt from this rule. There was a point during that week that I don’t think anyone thought the wedding would go ahead. We feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have had the wedding that we did in the middle of a global pandemic, planned in two weeks with those closest to us. Sadly some of Nick’s family who live in America could not make it but they managed to Facetime during the drinks reception.

Did you manage to stick to your budget?

Our budget was set quite loosely, when we started to plan the wedding we didn’t have a clue what we were doing or how much to expect to pay for various suppliers. But thanks to Covid we never went over our budget due to not being able to have all the guests that we would have wanted there. We still hope to have a party in 2021 but haven’t made any plans for that yet.

Any advice?

To quote our venue from one of their newsletters; ‘Sometimes, in the face of great uncertainty and against the odds what is needed is a sense of boldness. To escape the shackles of expectation and attempt the unthinkable.’ We can’t think of any better advice.

Be bold, do what you feel is right for you, forget what’s expected of a wedding, this is your day!

Honeymoon or minimoon?

We had honeymoon plans which sadly had to be cancelled. We were due to go away for six weeks and we planned on going to the Galapagos and were due to spend time in Peru also. It was a dream that will have to wait a little longer.

After the wedding we headed up north to Nethy Bridge to a beautiful big house in the trees with a hot tub – despite it not being where we planned, it was a different kind of dream and we got to take our little dachshund, Daisy.

What’s the one moment you will always remember?

The moments after the wedding when everybody cheers and throws confetti. What a feeling! My friend must’ve read my mind because I had wanted to get confetti but it was one of those things I had thought about getting and ran out of time for. She had bought some and passed it around all the guests and it was wonderful! Nick enjoyed it that much that he kept saying one more time, so we went around our socially distanced guests three times with them cheering – our victory laps!

Love the sound of socially distanced victory laps – thanks for sharing your beautiful day with us Mel and Nick. x