Emotional wedding at Rosebery Estate with fabulous food

Megan Brown and 
Mathew Grace, now Mr and Mrs Grace

1st July 2023

Venue | Rosebery Estate
Photography | Blue Sky Photography

How many times has fate lent you a life-changing helping hand? Once? Twice? In bride Megan’s case, we reckon she has probably lost count. Somehow, lucky connections just keep happening around her.

Back when she was 15, she met a boy called Mathew at a party. The two hit it off and spent hours together, talking and laughing. But it was just that: one perfect evening. Fast-forward ten years and Megan is outside an Edinburgh nightclub when she hears someone calling her name. “Remember me from that house party?” says the guy. Yes, you guessed it: Mathew. As our bride sweetly puts it, “The rest is history.”

Over the next few years, the couple moved around a lot – all the way to Australia, back to Scotland, and then over to Amsterdam where, in December 2021, Mathew proposed.

Back in the Midlothian area for Christmas with their families, they shared the good news of their engagement. Top of Megan’s priorities before she officially rejoined Mathew in Amsterdam to start her new job was viewing wedding venues and securing a date.

“On our first visit to Rosebery my sister and I were in tears. It was the best feeling! We loved it so much”

“We were keen on a summer wedding,” she recalls, “and, obviously, that’s the most popular time. I really wanted to lock in the date and venue as quickly as possible so we wouldn’t have to have a three-year engagement.”

At this point, the couple had only viewed one venue, Archerfield, where Megan’s sister Zoe had married a few years previously. “It is a beautiful, amazing place, but it just wasn’t us,” she says. “Mathew and I were hoping for a really personal day where everyone could feel at home; we didn’t want anyone to feel they were at ‘an event’, because it’s not, it’s our wedding day.”

Over the Christmas holidays Megan’s mum was out walking the dog, and got chatting to someone. With the recent engagement firmly on her mind, she mentioned that her daughter was starting the venue search. The person she was talking to just happened to be connected to the nearby Rosebery Estate, and told her to check out this gorgeous venue. With Mathew already back in the Netherlands, Megan took Zoe with her to view it and the two of them were immediately in tears. “It was just the best feeling!” laughs the bride. “We loved it so much.”

Being able to hire both Rosebery House and Rosebery Steading meant all the couple’s boxes were ticked. There was enough space for their guests (just under 100 were invited, some travelling all the way from Sydney and San Francisco), lots of outdoor space, an adorable private chapel, the option to have a wide variety of different suppliers, and accommodation for 48 of their closest friends and family to stay on site for the entire weekend.

And there was another gift from the fates: “I was thrilled when I looked at the list of approved catering suppliers and saw Wilde Thyme’s name on it,” Megan recalls. “They’re the best. I thought to myself, if they’re free on this day, that’s our wedding day.” And the company lived up to its five-star reputation: “They were so on the ball, from the free bar they manned for us right through to the incredible dessert.”

Despite planning almost the entire affair from abroad, the newlyweds say they found the whole process “really fun and not stressful at all”, thanks to Rosebery’s talented staff, particularly housekeeper Kyla and weddings and events manager Louise.

Whether it was springing into action to shield guests from the summer showers on arrival, or placing the forgotten handwritten place-card messages around the tables before the couple had even noticed they were missing, “Louise was just like, ‘I’ve already done it, it’s fine’ – it was amazing, they were all so great! If anything actually did go wrong, Mathew and I certainly didn’t know about it. The whole weekend was just perfect. We wish we could just turn back the clock and do it all again!”