We got home from our honeymoon late Thursday evening, and if I leave it any longer to write this post I’ll have forgotten everything! But where to begin?

Our wedding was a very small, casual affair, we only told the people we invited – my son, Bob, and his wife Regina; Dave’s daughter, Jo, and her husband Alistair; and Morag, the celebrant – and a few people I work with. It seemed the easiest way: we couldn’t afford a big wedding, and wouldn’t have wanted one anyway, and we felt we’d only disappoint our friends and families if we told them we were getting married but they couldn’t come. I have to say it was extraordinarily difficult at times to keep the excitement to myself, and I did tell one friend in a moment of unbinding who I then had to swear to secrecy (thank you, Sylvia, for keeping shtum!).

My son walked me down the ‘aisle’ to Tom Waits’s ‘Bad as Me’

which felt both utterly appropriate when I chose it and, thankfully, on the day itself. We both love Tom Waits and this song seems to speak to our relationship – or an aspect of it . We’re probably not as unconventional as we like to think, but both of us often feel quite disconnected from societal norms as, I suspect, most artists do. That said we fell in with many contemporary wedding traditions.

We had an Interfaith Celebrant (Morag Cameron, who was wonderful, we got really lucky when we found her), drank sloe gin from a Quaich (see header image), had a handfasting, made vows*, said ‘I do’, placed rings on each other’s fingers, and kissed when Morag told us we could.

We even had a cake:

thanks to Jo (which came on honeymoon with us and we’re still eating daily!).

After the ceremony we went to Ebb Carr’s cafe at St. Abbs harbour for crab sandwiches and prosecco, which was perfect. I’d hoped to sit outside

I found this photo on the internet as I had failed to take one myself.

but it was a little too chilly for me, and inside turned out to be great.

Once we were stuffed we went crab hunting in the harbour (didn’t catch a single one!)

and then back to the house for chats.

Jo, Alistair, and the kids had to leave us at about seven o’clock (which was sad), but Bob and Reg stayed with us (until Tuesday when Dave and I left for Ullapool and they went to Edinburgh to catch up with their friends before returning to the U.S.A) so we went to a pub in Coldingham for supper to round off the celebrations.

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Next up: The Honeymoon.

I’m still going through all the holiday snaps, but will share a few in the next day or so (I did have every intention of writing a daily travel post but the internet wasn’t working in our cottage on Lewis).

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* Dave’s vow:
I promise to be your old brick wall
Baking in the sun
To drive you down the road to happiness
And mild confusion
Your early waking unfocussed thought
As eager as a child to laugh
You make “forever” sound like
A damned good idea!
You are a bolt from the blue…the unexpected ending.
You are my Eryl.

My vow:
I promise to be your hawthorn avenue
your red necked phalarope
the wild in your wilderness.
To listen to your morning ramblings
shimmy to your rants
to relish the cherry of your singularity.
To be the tide that returns with the fish of your dreams
and the string to bring it home in.
I promise to be the cheese to your cracker
the glass for your beer
and the ottoman on which you can rest your tired feet.
May I always be the home in which you choose to bide.