Day Guests Group Picture

Everyone on the bridge for the group shot including shots during the longest snog in the world!! ;-p

Wedding Photos by George Lammie

 On the roof top of Princess Street Suites on Waterloo Place.

 In the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Please click on the following link to view all our wedding photos. The link will remain up until December 2011.http://www.georgelammie.com/jennieandnathan/

We placed some hard copies of the photos that you are in along with your thank you card but if you would like any other copies please do let us know as we have a copyright free CD that we have paid our photographer for. 

Sadly not everyone appears in the professional photos but we know that a lot of our guests have beautiful snaps from our wedding day. We would really appreciate a CD of high res images that you took at our wedding so we can pull together a 'guest photo album'. 

We will also have the video uploaded on here soon so watch this space. 

Love Nathan & Jennie. x

Our Wedding Suppliers

Unless otherwise stated all photographs are by George Lammie Photography. 

When organising our wedding we really enjoyed looking for suppliers that would provide the level of service and skill that we were looking for to make our wedding personnel and special for us and our guests. 

I also loved looking for those little elements I could be creative with and also enjoyed when I got to do a little crafting. 

We would recommend the following suppliers. 

Tim Maguire was brilliant. We loved planning our Humanist Ceremony.  Tim gave us homework to do to plan the contents of our ceremony. We had to each go away and individually write how we met and fell in love, what we loved about the other person that meant we wanted to marry each other and then what we, individually wanted for our future. We then set aside time to sit and tell each other what we'd wrote. It was such a fun thing to do and lots came out of it that we didn't expect. 

We then worked with Tim to tailor our ceremony. He sent us a whole booklet of verses/poems etc and we were really happy with our ceremony. It was very personal and was about us. 

I am very thankful that Tim was there to keep Nathan calm as I was 30 minutes late (transportation issues) and hopefully we didn't delay Tim getting to the next wedding he had that day. If anyone is looking for more information on Humanist Weddings we would advise visiting Tim's very informative blog.

Rather than a ring pillow or similar we had made a small dish from Paloma's Nest with our names and the date of our marriage on the porcelain bowl. It is very fragile but so beautiful. In the photo above the photographer kept the bowl in the packaging it was sent with. I like that we will always have the ring bearer bowl. A family heirloom to pass down the generations. 

Nathan's Dad's acquaintance, Vincent Dunbar is a jeweler in Hatton Garden in London. He made my engagement ring (which I love) specific to Nathan's requirements (with a few hints from yours truly!) and so he also had my bespoke wedding band created to match the engagement ring. He provided a brilliant service with a helpful discount and was so lovely to speak with. To visit his website click here but I'd advise giving him a call to talk through what you are looking for.

Signing the register. I like this picture as our hands are side by side and you can see our wedding bands.

Photo by Jennie Pike

For all our wedding print- Save the dates, Invites, Envelopes, Order of Ceremony, Thank you cards etc we used Vistaprint. We were really impressed with their service and loved all the extras like the envelope seals etc that you can create on their site.

One of the lovely girls in my office, Mariapia has a great friend who she recommended as a good make up artist. Sara Alexander had worked on the Mac counter for 8 years before becoming a nurse. She now does make up as a side job. We did one make up trial back in March and then we booked her in. She did the make up for me and all the bridesmaids on the day of the wedding.

Sara brought all of her Mac make up with her to use on us lovely ladies.

One of my favourite suppliers was by far Rachel from Rachel Scott Bridal. Rachel was so honest, happy to give her opinion but also knew when to step back and let you have time with your bridesmaids and Mum. It was such a pleasure going into her shop and she was so patient when I was still making my decision and she even let me have a sneaky few try ons by myself when I was passing so I knew I was making the right decision. 

We did a lot of wedding dress shopping- I don't know how many dresses I tried over 7 different shops but when I got to Rachel's shop I just knew I wanted to find my dress in her store. We had been in 2 weeks before when my Mum had seen my dress on a hanger. Hanging up it didn't look much but when we went back in to try it on I felt like me. It was elegant, classic with a modern twist.  I adored the wrap that I wore with the dress. I loved the curls that came to life as soon as I moved and the organic shapes lent itself to an outdoor botanical garden wedding.

My dress was designed by Parisian dress designer, Suzanne Ermann. 

Nathan purchased a new kilt outfit for the wedding as his previous kilt outfit was bought for his 18th  Birthday and the kilt was pretty much standing up by itself as it was so booze stained from rugby matches and rugby club dinners. I loved his new kilt colours. The tartan is the Holyrood tartan that was designed in 1977 for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. I also loved the charcoal Argyll Jacket which the Best Men and Groomsmen all had too. They got all their kilt items including hire at McCall's on Elm Row. Ed, one of Nathan's Groomsmen had a contact their and they really looked after us.

My lovely friend Zara put me onto a great shoe website through Amazon- Javari. I purchased my shoes which were from Badgley Mischka with a nice little discount. I loved the tulle bows that worked well with the tulle on my dress. I will admit that they were not the comfiest of shoes even after I'd worn them round the house with socks a lot!!

This photo makes me smile.... can you tell I was a Brownie and a Girl Guide!? Be prepared! As well as my wedding shoes I purchased blue welly boots in case it was very wet at the botanics. I never had to use them but I will be wearing them down the rugby club this next season no doubt! My gold pumps I wore in the evening and was so happy to dance in them after my wedding shoes had cramped my feet. Our colour coordinated brollies were in case it rained and we couldn't take photos outdoors with our families and wedding party. I had seen some cute outdoor pics of wedding couples/family huddled under brollies in the rain. We purchased them from Brollies Galore who are in West Lothian. We also had 5 blue sun parasols but we never had a chance to use them... I can't decide to either sell them on e-bay or keep them for a future party decoration.

All our flowers were lovingly created by Nathan's Aunt Alana with help from Nathan's Mum and Dad. I loved my bouquet and have the most amazing memories of being in Nathan's parent's garden in the run up to the wedding when Alana had a production line with all the American girls finishing off the flowers she had created and Nathan's Mum, Lily bringing a mirror all the way down to the garden so I could figure out how big we wanted my bouquet.... talk about service! ;-)

The arbour worked beautifully and I am so glad that we will have the arbour in our future garden and one day our children can sit and read on it or play around it and know that we were married under it.

We also purchased baby blue Shepherd's crooks which Alana placed hydrangea pom poms onto. There were 6 down the aisle on either side. We purchased the Shepherd's crooks at Black Country Metal. 

The staff at the Royal Botanical Gardens were AMAZING! They were so professional and could not do enough for us. I printed off power point slides showing how we wanted the guest book table etc all laid out and it was perfect. They put up the arbour, provided brollies to those that needed them and generally looked after us so well. I would recommend them to everyone. Above you can see the Caledonian Hall where we had our drinks reception. This photo is just before the rain started to fall. I would have preferred not to have had the marquee there but it was left over from an event the night before and was needed for that evening.

 Photo by Jennie Pike

This is our sampling platter for our drinks canapes which we tried a few weeks before our wedding. We went for 3 of these but not the second from the right instead we had mini croque monsieurs with ham and cheese (as we'd already tried them at our friends Anna and Andrew's wedding) The beef, on the right was my favourite by far. Above is:

* Parmesan shortbread, red pepper, Inverloch goats cheese (v)
* Duck spring rolls
* Szechwan beef with cucumber, soy, ginger glaze and sesame

For our drinks we had:

50 x bottles of Jeio Prosecco
150 x bottles of beer; 100 x Heineken, 50 x Stewart's Brewering Holyrood 
10 x bottles sparkling/still mineral water
6 x jugs of fresh orange juice

The Ritz Trio were brilliant but had a rough deal. Due to the wet weather they couldn't run power and link up their amp through the outdoor grounds as the Botanics were worried about electrocuting someone so they sounded very soft and quiet. They played after the ceremony at the drinks reception in the Caledonian Hall. They then set up inside and just after the sun came out so most people ventured out to the gardens. You could still hear them and it made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. They are brilliant musicians and I loved Marcus Ford (the guitarist) playing solo during our signing of the register.

Instead of a guest book we had a finger print tree. On the sign we asked people to leave their thumb print in green ink and sign their name. This created all the leaves on our Wedding Tree. We thought it worked well with the Botanics. We now have it hanging in our bedroom. Becky and I's lovely childhood friend Susie Wright drew this tree. (She is a wonderful artist... we have one of her deer prints as well) The tree in the picture is the tree that is just outside Caledonian Hall where we had our drinks reception.

From being at other weddings we knew that often cards/ presents that people bring on the day go missing so when I saw a bird cage being used as a letter/card drop on another blog I thought this was a very cute idea.

As we invited our friends children to attend the botanics we had a few toys to play with. Bubble machines -which we heard some children weren't so impressed with ;-) and also a toy Red Bus  from the White Company to echo the bus we would be travelling in to get to Howies Restuarant. 

The Red Bus were great to deal with and so easy. Clunie, who runs the company was lovely and we didn't even have to think about the transport for everyone once they took the booking. The Red Bus (along with dressed up Bus Conductress) took us all from the Botanics to Howies where we were having our evening reception. At the suggestion of the staff at the Botanics we purchased fun tickets to have the Groomsmen give out to our guests to determine if they were on either the red ticket (first trip) or blue ticket  (second trip) bus. I saw Greg at one point (jokingly, I hope) trying to sell the tickets to the highest bidder!

The bus was a lot of fun and on our trip we had Ed singing nursery rhythms (which he usually sings to Katie) which were highly amusing.

The Red bus parked outside Howies. I loved the ribbon and the flowers that they used to decorate the bus and also the bespoke sign that they made for us. I have now painted a red canvas and stuck the sticker onto it for another piece of wedding art!

I loved making all the little craft elements of our wedding. Hobbycraft became my regular haunt and I also used a few other websites like Melody Maison, Not on the High Street for the white frames, Party  Packs for the shabby chic pegs and blackboard table names.

As we had used the N&J letters throughout our stationary I echoed this by painting letters that I bought in Hobbycraft. 

I found a beautiful stamp of a couple holding hands under the trees and it made me think of what we would be like in the Botanics so I used this on a number of our Wedding items. I stamped it on the rehearsal dinner bags for the Friday night and then also on the back of the name tags for the Wedding day. 

 

 Photo by Jennie Pike

Photo by Jennie Pike

On the wedding day the hearts with the shabby chic heartclips looked lovely clipped to the wine glasses to mark each persons place. Rather than a Wedding favour we donated money to Cancer Research UK. In the left hand corner in the picture above you can see the little card which gave everyone the details and also a small pin badge that Nathan encouraged everyone to wear. It was a good gesture especially as both our families have been affected by cancer and have benefited from advances in Cancer Research.

I very much enjoyed that by the end of the evening not only did people have their Cancer Research pin badges on but also they were wearing their name tags pinned on with their shabby chic white pegs! 

Photo by Jennie Pike.

On the back of the blackboard table names I stuck beautiful heart shaped laser cut stickers. My Mum had bought these in America for me the year before to add to my Wedding supplies. They came in very handy. 

All the table names were named after rugby fields where Nathan had played rugby. I loved the relaxed country garden floral displays that Alana produced with the assistance of the American girls. We popped the table names in the centre of each display. We had 24 white acrylic square vases (although 6 went missing on the day!) We purchased the white vases from Michael Dark. We also got the tall vases for the arched windows at Howies from Micheal Dark.

For the alcohol at the wedding we served Prosecco when people arrived as well as Williams Brothers beers. The wine with the meal was Oyster Bay (which we got from Waitrose) and a lovely red that our friend Benji recommended from Great Grog. 

Howies food was delicious and although in hindsight we had fish, blackpudding and a cheese/veggie option for both the starter and the main, we really enjoyed our food. Our aim was to not have steak or chicken on our menu. The food sampling at Howies was great fun with Becky and Ramin the month before our Wedding and we did a wee secret voting system so we choose the most popular dishes that we had voted for. By far the winner overall was the chocolate brownie for dessert! Delicious!!!

For our Wedding Cake we didn't want an ordinary sponge cake so we ventured to Ian Mellis on Victoria Street to look at cakes entirely made of cheese wheels!  We picked this cheddar below.... but the whole round was far too much for 150 people so they prepared a couple of inches of the cheddar. We also had a Stilton and 2 Camemberts on the top. When we served the cheese in the evening buffet there was also a delicious brie with the rest of the cheese, biscuits, grapes, chutneys etc.

Photo by Jennie Pike.

My friend Heidi was kind enough to send over the lace border that we wrapped around the cheese. We added the sugar mice as a nod to trips to North Berwick with my Dad and Nathan's nickname for me 'mouses'. Howies added the radish and grapes.

Sadly Howies didn't put out the cupcakes that my sister, Becky made until later in the evening. I had wanted them to be put out at the same time as we cut out cake so we have no photos of the beautiful cupcakes on the perspex cupcake tower. Heidi also sent lace cupcake wrappers for the cupcakes Becky made. 

 Photo by Jennie Pike

 Photo by Jennie Pike

Photo by Jennie Pike. Becky putting the finishing touches to her cupcakes. They were delicious. It is sad no one got a picture of them when the were set up on the wedding day.

 I loved our sweetie bar! We bought striped blue and white sweetie bags, silver scoops and little cute blackboard signs. The sweeties were presented in vases from Howies, my Grandma's glass bowls and also my bob bon jars. The sweetie bar was a HUGE hit!

The sweeties were bought at Costco and the ones we had left we took to our BBQ on the Sunday.

Nathan's friend from school, Ian Campbell piped our guests into the wedding reception. I also loved being piped into the top table. I was sad that we didn't have tables to walk around as I have seen others do at their weddings but I loved it all the same. 

We toasted with Ian, our piper by opening a bottle of whisky my Dad's old University friends had given him to thank him for organising their Uni reunion in 2006. We also used one of my Dad's quaichs.

Our band, Callanish were fantastic and they really did keep the party going. They played a mixture of their playlist, our choices and a few Scottish Country Dances (although there was not much room for dancing reels in Howies.) The singer was really good. We had heard Callanish play at a number of Weddings we had been to and they never disappoint no matter what line up.

By far one of the biggest successes of the evening was the Photobooth from Look Look. Nathan and I love fancy dress parties so we bought fancy dress items such as hats, glasses and moustaches and created a fancy dress box for people to use. We also provided chalk boards for people to write messages. 

Once we knew we would have this at our wedding this had determined our idea for our save the date.

We have some excellent photos from our photo booth that evening and every ones pictures were printed out then and there for them to take home with them. We have been delighted to see some of our friends have them up framed in their homes already! We also have a CD of all the photos should you want more copies (or for our future bribery!) and to see the full gallery please go to Look Look's website. Darran was great to work with and I would highly recommend their services.

Sadly the above picture shows the lovely paper artwork having slipped in it's frame on the wedding day.

This is one of my favourite things that we have from the wedding. I had wanted to have laser cut invites but it was very very expensive so we compromised. I found an artist called Julene Harrison who makes beautiful bespoke hand made cut outs. We provided images of what our wedding would look like including the stamp I had used on some of our creative elements and a photo of Nathan and I (to show the height difference) Julene sent a rough sketch and then when we were happy cut out the shapes. (Nathan doesn't have a kilt on as otherwise he looked like a big girl and my dress is not bespoke as otherwise it would have given it away to Nathan before our big day!) We love that the Botanics logo is included (which we didn't even send over)- good research Julene and there is a rugby ball and cupcakes, Caledonian Hall, Calton Hill near Howies, The Ritz Trio, The Red Bus and us under our arbour. It sums up our wedding day in one lovely piece of artwork and makes for a lovely thank you card!