A Perfect Wedding
By Karen MacDonald
...he said, he’d only come out to get a bacon roll and had not expected to get invited to a wedding on Ardmair beach!
We stayed the night before our wedding at a Bed and Breakfast in Ullapool run by our friends Simon and Eileen, also our witnesses. In the morning Sandy set off in his kilt to walk to Ardmair, where my father had been brought up on a croft, leaving me to pick my posie from the road verges and garden. Although it was all a secret, when I spotted cousin Dulcie I had to shout on him the news. He was delighted to join us, even though as he said, he’d only come out to get a bacon roll and had not expected to get invited to a wedding on Ardmair beach!
As we were finishing the ceremony a man offered to take some photos for us - we were delighted. I noticed someone on the periphery who looked very like my first cousin once removed, Helen. It turned out it was and she was staying in what had been my uncle Willie’s house and which my cousin Deirdre rents out as a holiday house that many of the family enjoy staying in. The photographer was her husband whom I’d not met properly before. We all had a lovely picnic on the beach, toasting the day with Laphroaig warmed by the sun. As another strange coincidence, the house Simon and Aileen live in had been built by Helen’s mother and named Tenterden after the town she was from.
Eventually only the bride and groom remained and we took a wander along the road past the houses, noting the saltire flag flying from the garden of one of the other holiday houses. Well Willie McGregor was responsible for that as we soon found out when he appeared and we got talking. His wife and himself had been watching our proceedings from their window and when we were ushered in they told us how they had renewed their vows several years previously. A few drams were exchanged, until we really had to gather ourselves for a hike back into town. I left my posie for their luck.
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