Wild and wintry Game of Thrones inspired wedding

Anyone else beyond excited about the new (and final!) season of Game of Thrones starting this week? Something tells us Heather and Tony will be! They were married at the Barn at Barra Castle in rural Aberdeenshire in a wild and wintry celebration inspired by their favourite medieval fantasy series. And unlike the Red Wedding in Season Three, this day was full of laughter and smiles. Winter is here…

Love at first sight?

Despite having a substantial amount of mutual friends we actually met by accident on a night out at (now defunct) Korova Bar. The next day we both messaged our friends saying that we liked each other and they facilitated in swapping our numbers. Unfortunately, I was away for a conference then Tony went offshore for a couple weeks immediately after so it was several weeks before we saw each other again. We met up again at (also now defunct) Snafu to see our friends band, The Watchfires, play and I guess the rest is history.

We got engaged in October 2017 on holiday in Cyprus. I’ve been going to Cyprus with my family for over 20 years and it is a very special place to me and my family. Before flying out to Cyprus, unbeknownst to me, Tony had told our families he was planning to propose to me while we were out there. I think everyone except me knew it was happening! He carried the ring around with him for several days before proposing and apparently he was worried about me finding it accidentally which luckily I didn’t!

The day he did propose we’d spent it just chilling out on the beach with family friends and once everyone else had left for the evening and it was just the two of us he got down on one knee in the sand and asked me to marry him. And I said yes, obviously!

What inspired your plans?

Game of Thrones! We wanted to have a bit of a Game of Thrones meets Scotland theme just to add a flourish to the day without being too cheesy or over-the-top. All of our suppliers really embraced the theme and helped us to bring it to life. The entire venue was given a medieval-ish styling and our tables were sorted into Houses which was a bit of fun for our guests to match their seats to the appropriate House sigils. We also hid little lego figures in the moss on the tables and had Jon Snow and Ygritte Lego figures on our cake. We even managed to find the ultimate Game of Thrones/Scotland blend with a Game of Thrones styled Dalwinnie whisky for our quaich!

We also had a lot of lovely and generous gifts from friends and family that made our wedding so personal. Our cake was lovingly made by our bridesmaid, Meriel, and our favours were jars of honey kindly donated by our friend, Craig, who keeps bees. A family friend, Julie, also made a shadow box of photographs and memorabilia of where we got engaged as a wedding present which we put on display for guests to peruse.

We really wanted some beautiful wintery foliage to bring out our theme but to also use flowers that were largely in season. We had loads of lushious greenery with eucalyptus, soft ruscus and ivy, which was brightened up with some romantic deep red roses, ivory spray roses and some thistles. For the table and hall decor we again had generous helpings of moss and ivy with beautiful flowers giving pops of colour.

Trina from Trina’s Art and Flowers provided our boutonnieres, corsages, bouquettes and my all important flower crown. When we met with Trina she was so excited about our Game of Thrones theme – little did we know she was actually providing the flowers for Rose Leslie and Kit Harington’s wedding! Trina made such a beautiful job of all the flowers and we had so many compliments on how beautiful the flowers were, especially my flower crown!

The rest of our flowers and decorations were provided by Suki at Hudsons Flowers. Like Trina, Suki is an absolute superstar and she was so committed to our theme that she even built our thrones for the dinner out of her dining room chairs! We really cannot stress how much work Suki put in to transforming the Barn into a beautiful medieval-style banquet hall. There were so many wonderful details it would be hard to list them all but I think the unmissable decor was the large dragon print Suki managed to source for us to act as a photobooth. Everyone had so much fun dressing up and taking photos with it.

We ordered our wedding stationery from an Etsy store, WeddingFactoryHella. As we were having a Game of Thrones theme to the wedding we were looking for something that would excite our guests and elude to what was in store!

Our beer for the afternoon reception was supplied by local brewery Fierce Beer. It went down an absolute storm!

We really cannot stress how much each supplier really embraced our theme and how wonderful and instrumental they all were to making the wedding what it was!

Tell us about your venue…

Both of us grew up in Aberdeenshire and love the rugged charm of the Scottish countryside. As most of our family and friends either live, or did live, in Scotland we wanted to have the wedding somewhere that was familiar and accessible – having those we love there was the most important thing to us. Plus it was a good excuse for whisky and a ceilidh!

When we booked the Barn at Barra Castle it had been open less than a year but there was a huge buzz about the place. All the photos we saw on their website and social media channels looked incredible.

We drew up a shortlist of venues that suited what we wanted – somewhere not too formal and somewhere big enough for guests to be able to stay inside as we knew we’d likely be having an autumn or winter wedding – but in our hearts we already knew we wanted to book Barra. As soon as we saw it in person we knew it was the venue for us. We cancelled the remainder of our viewings and called them back the next day to set our date.

The Barn is such an incredible space set in such a beautiful part of the countryside, and we really fell in love with how versatile the space is and how personalised you could make it. And Sarah, the owner, was so delightful and incredibly enthusiastic that you knew she really cared about every single couple and their wedding.

We love your dress! Tell us more…

I wore a beautiful Ronald Joyce ballgown (Lesley) in ivory with a beautiful lace detailed train and a lace trimmed veil from Elizabeth Dickens (Roberta), both of which I got from Brides Delight in Aberdeen.

I knew I wanted a ball gown style dress because I think they look so beautiful but they also give you enough freedom of movement for dancing! I also knew I wanted something with lace but not too much sparkle to it. When me and the mums had our appointment in Brides Delight I told them the kind of thing I was looking for and I think I tried on nearly every ballgown dress they had. It was hard to pick as there were so many beautiful dresses but this one ticked all the boxes for me.

I tend not to wear a lot of jewellery in my day-to-day life so I didn’t want anything too flashy. I wore a pearl bracelet that belongs to my nannie and a pearl necklace. The pearl necklace was actually my great-grandmother’s wedding present over 95 years ago! She wore them on her wedding day as did my mum so it was really special to me that I got to wear them on my wedding day too.

And what about Tony’s outfit?

Tony wanted a tartan that reflected his heritage but was also something that appealed to him. He narrowed down his choices to a variety of Smith and Farquharson tartans but ultimately settled on the more muted Ancient Smith. He coupled this with a Braemar style jacket and waistcoat in Lovat Tweed with horn buttons, which really complimented the Ancient Smith tartan.

Your photos are beautiful! Where did you look for inspiration?

I love We Fell in Love! It’s so inspiring to see how couples shape their weddings to reflect their personalities. I believe I first became aware of our photographers, Aboyne Photographics, through the blog.

Laura and Russell are honestly absolute darlings. I saw a lot of their photographs on numerous wedding blogs and websites and decided to have a better look through their Facebook page. From the moment we heard back from Russell we knew we were on to winners, and that was only confirmed 10 fold when we had our first meeting with them.

We both loved the really modern and candid style of the photos that really captured the emotion of the scene. Nothing was too much for either Laura or Russell and on the day of the wedding they wrangled guests with ease and really relaxed everyone involved in the day. We have so many beautiful memories of our day and so many of them we were completely unaware of them being taken! It’s impossible to pick our favourites because they’re all so incredible!

What was your first dance song?

Our first dance was to “As Long As You Follow” by Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac is a favourite band of ours and something we bonded over very early in our relationship. We actually both independently reached the conclusion that was the song we would like for our first dance!

Our band Iron Broo were absolutely fantastic the entire night. We both really wanted a ceilidh band as we both love flying round at ceilidhs and wanted to honour our Scottish roots. We had many guests from outside of Scotland and they all really enjoyed the dancing. Charlie and the rest of the guys were fabulous at getting people up to dance and for really reading the room. They also supplied us with a disco for the last 30 mins of the night which was a perfect ending to the day.

Honeymoon or minimoon?

Honeymoon! As our wedding was rather close to Christmas we decided to postpone our honeymoon until a later date so we could just relax and enjoy Christmas with our families.

Both Tony and myself are big motorsport fans so we’ve planned our honeymoon around the Formula 1 race in Baku – which is one of our favourite tracks. We will spend a long weekend in Baku, Azerbaijan before moving on to Dubai for another few days.

We have several friends who live in the Middle East so this is an opportunity for us to catch up with them and explore a region I’ve never been to. After all that excitement we are spending a week in a private resort in the Maldives. We’re very much looking forward to a week of excitement followed by a week of complete rest and relaxation to enjoy each other’s company. We can’t wait!

Any advice?


Being organised early doors, and picking your suppliers carefully, will really help you relax further down the road.

There is a lot to organise when putting a wedding together but putting together a concerted research effort early and working with suppliers who are genuinely invested in your wedding will make you so much more relaxed and comfortable closer to the day.

And listen to your gut – it knows who is a good fit for your and your wedding!

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

The whole day was exceptional from start to finish! The way the barn is set up you can partition the hall off so throughout the day the guests got to see each section of the hall as it was revealed. Seeing everyone’s faces when the tables for dinner were revealed was a really wonderful feeling.

So many suppliers helped us build a dream day and seeing it all come together on the day is something we will never forget.

The Game Of Thrones theme tune plays in our heads every time we look at these amazing photos. Such a perfectly executed (sorry!) theme. Thanks for sharing your day with us Heather & Tony! x