Our Scotland Wedding Adventure Part 1 – Glencoe

When Shaun and I first got engaged we went back and forth for a bit about what kind of wedding we wanted. There were so many different directions we could go in, quite literally … A Los Angeles city hall wedding, a downtown Detroit wedding, an elopement in Scotland, a big Los Angeles wedding, a small Big Sur wedding, a big crazy party wedding at the Madonna Inn  … all of the options sounded amazing for different reasons, but after going over all of the details it became clear that a small wedding was the best fit for us. So we decided to elope to Scotland and at a later date, have a reception in Los Angeles for our family and friends. We booked all of the Scotland elopement stuff — the date, the photographer, the hotel … and then decided that maybe we didn’t even really want to have a reception in LA after all. Too much to plan – we would have to find a venue, get food, decorate tables … and we just really didn’t want to deal with any of that. All we wanted was to say our vows to each other outside in an amazing location and maybe have a decent dinner after, and to be honest I didn’t really even care too much about the dinner :/

So we canceled the plan for an LA reception and asked our families + a few close friends if they would be interested in joining us in Scotland for a very very low key wedding. We thought maybe a few would say yes, and we were bowled over when we ended up with about 30 of our favorite people who were so excited to come on this adventure with us, even though it was on a Tuesday, going to be outside no matter how cold/wet/windy it would end up being, and just a few thousand miles away. No big deal but our loved ones were down and we were so excited.

As a wedding photographer I am well acquainted with how fast a wedding day can go by. You spend so much time and money on this thing and then it’s like boom boom it’s over. So when it became clear that our family + friends would be joining us all the way over in Scotland, we really wanted it to feel more like an adventure/experience rather then just them being at a wedding for a few hours and that’s it. A lot of the people who came with us don’t take trips like this very often, so I simulataneously really wanted to give everyone the space to make their own travel choices without planning everything to death, but also wanted to hang out with everyone as much as possible, if they were interested. So we invited everyone to make a couple of different stops with us on the way to our wedding location, which was about 7 hours north of Edinburgh, and again to our surprise, so many joined us along the way!

Pretty much everyone flew into either Edinburgh or Glasgow and about a 2.5 hour drive from both spots is one of the best places in the world — Glencoe. I had traveled there a couple of years ago and knew it would be the perfect place to connect with our loved ones in a casual setting where we could eat, drink, and be merry –surrounded by amazing scenery and an easy stop on the way to our final destination, The Isle of Skye.

We stayed at the Clachaig Inn, an inn that dates back to the 16th century, and spent a couple of days walking around in the rain, happily not getting WiFi, eating veggie haggis + porridge (maybe just me), drinking a lot of Scottish vodka/whiskey/gin, and dancing to the live music in the pub. It was perfect.

Here are a few 35mm and iPhone photos, along with some video from our time in Glencoe. I didn’t bring any of my ‘professional’ cameras with me on this trip, so it’s all lo-fi memories, except for what I am sure will be amazing wedding day photos + video from our photographer and videographer <3

To be continued!

You can view Pt 2 here!