As predicted in my previous post, this entry will be all about the most exciting day of my life: our wedding day!

The day itself began at Enchanted Manor on the Isle of Wight where we had the ceremony outside with beautiful blue sky and even some sunshine. We had some wonderful readings during the ceremony from Bob’s sister-in-law Maria, my niece Ella, and Jani, a friend of Bob’s family. We had shipped in John Baikie from Inverness to take our photographs as we knew how good he was and we wanted to make the most of the locations we had lined up for the day.

After a few drinks and canapés, we all headed down the road to St Catherine’s lighthouse where we had hired all three of the lighthouse cottages from Rural Retreats. We had also arranged for all of our guests to have tours of the lighthouse with Andrew who gave an introduction to the history of the lighthouse and then took them up the lighthouse to the lamp room. While the first group of guests were up there, we were having some pictures taken nearby and could see them and gave them a wave! We then made our way to the top of the lighthouse ourselves with John to have some pictures taken. Getting to the top with a long train on my dress wasn’t easy, but I managed with a lot of help from Bob!

We had set up one of the lighthouse cottages with food, drink, games and a picture slideshow of our lives so far, including how we met. The honeymoon location was still unknown to everyone except Bob and his parents, so we bought a large wall map of the world and got our guests to guess where we were going. All will be revealed in the next blog post!

Once the tours and photos were done at the lighthouse we travelled back up the road to the Buddle Inn where we had our meal and reception in their converted barn. Our tables were decorated with some beautiful lighthouse tea light holders, a gift from my colleagues at Alzheimer’s Disease International, and some thank you cards featuring lighthouse and hills/mountains cross stitch designs I had prepared myself (they took months and I had to get my sister involved towards the end to make sure they were all done on time!). The tables were named after various mountains, including Everest, Mount Vinson and Ruadh-stac Mor in Scotland. Arriving at the Buddle Inn also meant the grand unveiling of our wedding cake made by Niki at Ticketyboo Cupcakes, which featured the groom at the top of the mountain with the bride struggling to get up. A red and white-striped lighthouse also featured. It certainly attracted a lot of attention and we were pleased that everyone liked the cake, which we’d put a lot of thought into. It was the first time we’d seen it too and we were amazed!

It was a fantastic day and I was delighted when Bob originally suggested getting married on the Isle of Wight and involving St Catherine’s lighthouse. I couldn’t have asked for a better day and it was so lovely to spend the day with our close family and friends 🙂