A Borders love story: from farm shop to family
How a chance meeting at Peebles farmers' market turned into a rural Borders wedding.
Some love stories start with fireworks. Kirsty and Euan's started with a punnet of raspberries and an argument about whether they were overpriced, exchanged across a trestle table at Peebles farmers' market on a wet Saturday morning in 2021.
Four years, one farm shop job offer, and a lot of shared Sunday roasts later, the two married in a marquee a mile from where they first met, surrounded by the same stallholders who'd watched their romance unfold in instalments every fortnight.
A market romance
Kirsty ran a small preserves stall most weekends; Euan worked at his family's farm shop nearby and had taken to finding excuses to walk past her table between customers. It took him six weeks and, by his own admission, an unnecessary amount of chutney purchases before he asked her for a coffee.
Their courtship played out largely across the Borders - dog walks along the Tweed at Innerleithen, pub quizzes in Peebles, day trips to Kelso for the livestock mart because Euan, somewhat unromantically, needed to price up some tups. Kirsty says she knew he was serious when he started remembering which of her jams had sold out each week.
Building a wedding around where they fell for each other
When it came to planning, the couple never seriously considered anywhere outside the Borders. They married at a family friend's farm just outside Peebles, in a marquee that sat on the same field where the couple had their first proper date - a picnic that got rained off twice before the weather finally cooperated.
- Ceremony: humanist, conducted by a celebrant who wove in the farmers' market story throughout
- Marquee for 95 guests, dressed with foliage cut from the farm's own hedgerows
- Catering supplied in part by Euan's family farm shop, including their own beef for the main course
- Favours: miniature jars of Kirsty's raspberry jam, labelled with the wedding date
- Ceilidh band booked from Galashiels, playing until half past midnight
The Borders as a wedding setting
The Scottish Borders rarely get the same attention as the Highlands or the coast, but couples who marry there consistently mention the same things: soft rolling countryside that photographs beautifully without a single filter, genuinely warm local suppliers, and prices that stretch further than in Edinburgh or Perthshire. A marquee wedding for 100 in the Borders in 2026 typically runs from around £16,000 to £24,000 all in, noticeably less than comparable weddings closer to the capital.
Kirsty and Euan's day leaned hard into that local character - table names after Borders towns, a whisky bar stocked entirely with Scottish Borders Distillery gin, and a candid moment during speeches when the celebrant asked how many guests had bought jam from Kirsty's stall over the years. Nearly half the room put a hand up.
What they'd tell other couples
Euan's advice is blunt: don't overlook your own back garden, literally or figuratively, when scouting venues. The couple saved considerably by using a family field rather than a commercial venue, and reinvested the difference into catering and the band.
Kirsty's is softer - she says the wedding felt right because it told the truth about how they met, rather than trying to be grander or more polished than their actual story. Guests still talk about the raspberry jam favours, and a fair few of them have become regulars at her market stall since.
Four years on from that argument over raspberries, the couple now run a joint stall some Saturdays, presumably still disagreeing gently about pricing.