From custom bride and groom varsity jackets to colourful aisle signage, a BBQ feast to maps as order of service, creative couple Samuel and Genevieve made their wedding as personal as they could
Genevieve & Samuel
24th October 2020
Venue | Cardney Steading, Perthshire
Photography | Tandem Photo
“Samuel and I met on a dating app called Salt (the Christian version of Tinder) and were together six months before our engagement – it was a bit of a whirlwind!
We got engaged on 31st August 2019 up Knock Hill in Perthshire. I’ve had many happy family holidays in the area since I was a child and had always hoped that’s where I might eventually be proposed to.
Our first wedding-planning decision was who we wanted to marry us: Brian Ingraham, the pastor of our church, Re:Hope in Glasgow. We also quickly decided that we wanted a BBQ as our wedding meal.
We first holidayed together in Dunkeld, so when we discovered Cardney Steading, we knew it was the venue for us. We were immediately won over by the estate’s beautiful setting amid the Perthshire hills.
We wanted to be able to specify all the details and suppliers and Cardney gave us free rein in that regard. It offers lots of great spaces for the different parts of the day, has fantastic accommodation for guests and even has a silver London hackney cab to chauffeur you!
Our original wedding date was 13th June 2020, then 22nd August, then finally 24th October… the joys of Covid-19, eh?! We had initially planned a large gathering of 120 guests, but we had to whittle this right down in line with restrictions.
Rearranging our wedding twice (and cancelling our hen and stag dos) was stressful and upsetting, but God and good communication got us through. Experiencing the ups and downs together made us feel like we’ve got a great foundation for our marriage.
We hired GBR Technical Services to hook us up with a multi-camera live-stream for our absent guests to watch the ceremony on Zoom. They all said how much they enjoyed it, particularly the switching between cameras.
I was emotional when walking down the aisle towards Samuel. It had been such a rollercoaster getting to that point, that I was so relieved and delighted to be finally getting to marry him.
After we had the ‘I now pronounce you’ kiss, our pastor Brian – who likes a giggle – suggested we might like a re-run since we’d had to wait so long… so he pronounced us husband and wife again so that we could have a second ‘just married’ kiss!
We are both creative people and this influenced how we personalised things. Samuel had custom varsity jackets made for me, him and the two bridesmaids to wear (definitely our favourite keepsakes from the day) and even had bespoke slippers made for the whole bridal party.
We wanted a mix of posed and candid shots and sought a photographer who made us feel relaxed. I had met Audrey Russell [aka Tandem Photo] at a friend’s wedding and had seen how amazingly she captured the day. She’s a creative photographer who finds greats shots that are filled with a beautiful quality of light. She captured our day so well.
We honestly felt that all our suppliers were stars. They supported us through our postponements and they genuinely cared about making our day happen. They were all accommodating of the changes we had to make along the way and went out of their way to help us.
In hindsight, having reduced numbers meant it was an utter joy being able to soak up time with everyone, instead of having rushed conversations trying to get round everyone. A lot of guests commented that they found it moving being able to see us finally getting married after the rollercoaster build up to it.”
Top tip: “We’d suggest trying to keep wedding planning to certain days / times, so that it doesn’t monopolise your life. We also created a shared email and Google Drive so we could have a joint overview of our spreadsheets, to-do lists and supplier info. It meant nothing fell through the cracks and got forgotten – especially important with a DIY wedding like ours.”
We love going out walking in the countryside, so we designed our own stationery on Adobe Creative Suite taking hillwalking as a theme. We styled our order of service around an Ordnance Survey map and used a map of the area as the ‘guest book’ for attendees to write their messages on. We are framing it to go on a wall in our new house.
We also made signs in the colour of Sam’s Gunn tartan to line the aisle. They displayed words from one of the readings from the ceremony – ‘Love is Patient’, ‘Love is Kind’ etc. – and looked fantastic.
We laid the table used to sign the register with a tablecloth my granny had embroidered. She passed away a few months before the wedding, so it felt very moving to look down at it when we signed the register.
Sam’s granny is classed as ‘vunerable’ and was unable to attend in person, but she sent us Saltire and St George’s Cross flags that we hung on the wall behind us for the meal.
Our brother-in-law made our wedding cake. He’s an architect so took the job very seriously and did a superb job.
We also saved a bit of money using wedding website, Withjoy, to send out electronic save-the-dates and invitations. It meant guests could find all our wedding info in one place – particularly useful in light of the various changes to dates.
Venue Cardney Steading, Perthshire
Photography Tandem Photo
Pastor Brian Ingraham, Re:Hope Church
Bride’s dress Emma Roy of Edinburgh
Groomswear Slanj Kilts (for tartan trews) and Slater Menswear
Bridesmaids’ dresses Silkfred
Flower girl’s dress Next
Mother of the bride dress Bombshell London
Ceremony streaming GBR Technical Services
Wedding website Withjoy
Flowers Something Special Flowers
Catering Delicious Catering
Hair and makeup Sandra Cormack
Caricature artist Neil G. Smith
Gift list Prezola and Amazon
