Ten years and still dancing: revisiting our Highland wedding
For their tenth anniversary, they returned to the castle where it all began — with the same photographer.
When Iain and Morag got married at a castle venue in Angus a decade ago, their first dance was to a fairly average cover band doing a passable job of Van Morrison. This year, for their tenth anniversary, they went back — same castle, same turret room, and crucially, the same photographer, Aileen Grant, who they'd stayed in touch with ever since.
'We joked about it for years,' Morag says, 'that if we ever made it to ten we'd do it all again properly, just the two of us this time.' So in September, on the actual date of their wedding, they checked into the same room they'd spent their wedding night in, and Aileen turned up with the same camera bag and a decade's more experience.
Returning to the scene
Kinnettles had changed a little in ten years — new owners, a repainted dining hall, a walled garden that had matured from newly planted saplings into something genuinely lush. But the long gravel driveway, the stone steps where they'd had their confetti thrown, and the view over the Angus glens were exactly as they remembered.
Iain wore the same kilt, in Fraser hunting tartan, though he admits with a laugh that the waistcoat needed letting out slightly. Morag didn't attempt to fit the original dress but chose a soft ivory midi dress instead, 'something I could actually eat dinner in without holding my breath.'
What ten years teaches you
They asked Aileen to recreate a handful of the original shots exactly — the two of them on the same stone bench, the same doorway, the same spot by the loch where they'd had their evening photographs taken as the light went gold. Side by side, the images tell their own quiet story: fewer nerves, more ease, the same daft grin on Iain's face.
'The biggest difference,' Aileen says, having photographed hundreds of Scottish weddings since, 'is that on the wedding day everyone is performing joy a little, even when they mean it. Ten years on, it's just there. You don't have to ask them to look at each other.'
The dancing part
True to the title, they hired the same ceilidh band — three of the original five members are still playing together — and cleared the flagstone floor in the great hall for a full set of Strip the Willow with Iain's now-teenage niece leading the line, having been a toddler asleep in a pram at the original wedding.
- Consider photographing a vow renewal or anniversary at your original venue if it's still trading — many will offer a quiet weekday rate
- Book your original photographer if you can; the continuity in style and relationship shows in the pictures
- A shortened ceremony read by a humanist celebrant, even without legal vows, can be a moving way to mark the day
- Keep something small from the day itself — Iain still has the order of service, slightly foxed at the corners, tucked in his sporran
They finished the night the way they'd started married life: on the dance floor, slightly out of breath, surrounded by people who'd watched the whole decade unfold. 'Same castle, same song, same daft laugh when he steps on my feet,' Morag says. 'Some things you don't need to change.'