There is a profound emotion in marriage, an atavistic recognition of the value of connection all the more so when it’s your sister.
The ceremony was every bit the emotional, personal and intimate celebration of life that one would expect but it expressed in the details my sister’s convictions about how life should be lived in the community that is her home. Duncan her eldest piped us through the building leaving no doubt exactly where we were.
Lucy wore a veil as tradition demands and a family member said she’d probably rather be wearing coveralls for farm work but she of course carried herself with aplomb.
It was a room packed with emotion but also tradition, a connection to the past and a promise for the future that drew everyone in to a ceremony that is universal. But it was quintessentially Scottish.
Check out the oathing stones, whose significance I only understood during the ceremony. I added mine unaware, casually, but soon learned the meaning and apparently these stones from this day are to be collected into a display in the garden at home. What a brilliant tradition.
We ate a menu made in Scotland and I was required by my sister to speak, my last public act after which I settled back to be outside the stress zone. 
After my childhood tie-bound in school I swore I’d never wear a tie again and I didn’t for my own wedding but I once found a wooden bow tie maker in Czechia and if the occasion demands I’ll pull that out. It rides in the van with us and this occasion demanded I pull it out.
The dinner was perfect, combining the intimacy of the moment the jokes and the memories and the breaking of bread with the traditions of Scotland. I had soup to start, others had shrimp all locally sourced. 
Vegetarian risotto or Lucy’s own lamb to follow. I had the lamb with crusty rugged bread to sop the gravy. 
Scotland on a plate. There was cheese and biscuits and cake and lamb koftes (meatballs) later, a midnight “snack” highland style, and I hope there’s some cake lying around my sister’s home because I was unable to taste it last night. I was stuffed to the point I even passed on the cheese and crackers, my favorite snack and took only the lamb koftes because I wanted to honor Lucy’s work of lamb rearing and I did not suffer at all in so doing. The lamb was superb.
Fig pudding for me and chocolate mousse for some. 
They are a family of musicians so the evening devolved into various performances and I kept promising myself my bed and kept failing to fulfill my own expectation. Beer and whiskey kept me lubricated. 
This is the classic parlor whence the ceremony began and for a while I had it to myself, a rest with a whisky and a fire seemed quintessentially in the spirit of the night. Rain and wind slashed outside and pitter pattered on the windows.
I got to bed after one in the morning only after much conversation and learning what an astonishing cross section of people the happy couple knows. I even met a man born in Guyana… and I met another keen to know all about Suriname a long desired bucket list for him to visit. And luckily I suppose there was an extra hour of sleep for celebrants and workers.
There was the loud brash confident public display of joy. Paul, dreaming of Suriname, a musician chef and joker. I could be outrageous and he got it.
Solais had to stop supplying me single malt as he had to go perform.
Duncan plays the bagpipes and sings. My sister’s family is all talent;
Alex the wild Irishman lost and found now after thirty years. I think there was something spiritous in his Coca Cola.
And elsewhere the serene intimacy of the small group weaving their connection seamlessly for us to listen in on. Luke toured with Riverdance for years so his accordion is an extension of his thoughts.
I needed fresh air from time to time and between squalls I went outside in the cold windy night. There was a storm blowing in from the north Atlantic symbolic I thought of the sturdy strength of marriage protected by the strong stone walls of the building.
I hope by posting a few pictures here of something so positive you too will get a.revered sense of the possibilities in the face of so much negativity outside the bubble that is tiny Ullapool.
This wasn’t just two people getting married, it was a good moment to be alive.
