Wedding Day Adventure!

Conchra House

We came home early today with the explicit mission to update our blog.

First off, thank you so much to Doug's cousins Renee and Bob, and Sandi's friends Chris and Carrie and Brandy and Jeremy for sponsoring our three-night stay at the Conchra House! Three nights in an incredibly silent old farm cottage (a large old house with slow internet access but hey, some people love to get 'off the grid') on a one-lane road facing Loch Long.

We really should begin where we left off... our wedding day!

Blushing bride...

Our most special of days began in the most special of ways: exchanging our vows in a very private ceremony in a high field overlooking Loch Long, the tiny town of Dornie, and the Eilean Donan Castle in the distance.

Proud groom...

We posted our vows in a separate blog entry. They are so very personal and special to us. Our relationship has always been very much about quiet and intimate friendship, long talks to explore one another's perspectives, each challenging the other to grow, and adventuring! We are very much looking forward to a lifetime of the same.

What a view...

We each feel more at home in the "church of the landscape" where God's work is in evidence everywhere, and we decided that this would be the ideal location.

Up the hill!

And it was.

We returned to Conchra House to rest (it was quite a strenuous climb "up the aisle" to our field) and spruce up a bit for our photo shoot (I splashed mud on my dress in the final 10 yards of hill tromping!), which we expected to take most of the afternoon.

The view down the hill from the place we were wed.

Getting into the car!

The one-lane country road

Then into the car for a drive along a tiny one-lane country road (with frequent "passing places" to make way for infrequent oncoming traffic) to the Glenelg Ferry where we waited for a few minutes to meet Rosie Woodhouse, our photographer, who lived across the loch from the first set of locations.

The ferry stop was little more than a car ramp down into the loch with a tiny lighthouse next to the parking area, where coffee and snacks were available for sale on the honor system of payment. It was adorable.

Rosie is a delightful personality, which is so helpful for cultivating the right mood. A little bit o' peaty whisky was also an aid... She directed us to many stops throughout the afternoon, so we got quite a nice tour of the area all round Dornie, including some of the ancient dwellings. We were a very popular sight with the locals all afternoon: I guess it's not every day that a bride in a white dress is scampering about the beaches, cliffs, roadside sheds, fields, and ancient brochs, groom and flowers in tow... hopefully we will have more photos to post soon!

We had not eaten all day, but we were apparently high on love (and whiskey!). Around 4 o'clock Rosie left us for a few minutes at a tiny little restaurant in Breakish called Red Skye Restaurant while she popped home to look for some wellies (big rubber mud boots) for me to wear in the possibly wet and muddy field for the next shoot. Rosie told us that this was a fairly new restaurant, and as we sat and waited for her return, we looked at the menu and realized that this was not a simple fish & chips establishment! They were so kind as to ply us with tea and water, and let us use their toilets, which was... a relief.

We decided to order our dinner here, to pick up later after our shoot was over and return to our room to eat. When we returned to pick up our food after our shoot, they gave it to us on real plates, with real silverware, wrapped in a bit of tin foil to stay warm, and trusted us to bring it all back to them! Doug had venison with red currant sauce and I had roast lamb over a bed of mashed potatoes cooked in a lovely way. Both came with sides of the sweetest and most flavourful veggies! Perhaps it was hunger, perhaps it was love, perhaps it was the mead that we drank with it, but this was the most delicious wedding dinner we could imagine. And yes, we returned our cutlery and dishes on our way up to Portree on Skye.

There is so much more that we could say about this day... we wish we had taken more candid photos and videos along the way to share with you, but we were just so happy and focused on each other and the incredibly beautiful day, that we just forgot. But hopefully we'll make up for it!

Thank you for being a part of our adventure!!