Sandy's Blog

The venue for their wedding was in the picturesque town of Ullapool, in the North West of Scotland. I travelled up on Friday with the full intention of camping, however the horizontal rain convinced me otherwise so I decided to stay in the local youth hostel.

On the day (Saturday) the wedding ceremony was held in the Lochbroom Free Church for about an hour or so, before the reception in the Ceilidh Place. The venue for the reception was excellent - not too big and not too small, and the upstairs lounge was very well furnished and somewhat relaxing to sit in.

We all piled into the lounge for an hour or two and had some nibbles and champagne (although not too much - I learned the pitfalls of champagne after the last wedding I went to!). The meal was very good, some of the best wedding food I have had, and everyone was given a custom bottle of whiskey! (good point actually, where the hell has it gone?) As usual the groom managed to cover the grey areas during his speech and left the best man (Kameel) with not much room for maneuver! They were quite funny though, and a bit ad-hoc! (they hadn’t gotten together and worked out overlapping bits or anything!).

The ceilidh was quite good, predominantly because I could still stand up by this point. Ian’s fiance Jenn gave me some waltz dancing lessons but it is all just a big memory game (left 3, up-down, right 2, back 2, forward 2, spin girl, dance around a bit «repeat»). I think everyones toes were intact, in fact I danced with some women who were even worse than me, that was a bit of a novelty. During the ruckus the button on my argyll jacket broke off at some point which I have to stitch back on - bah.

Finally, some Soul/Funk band called ‘The Hustlers’ played for the last hour which was pretty cool. Kam and I were buying each other spirits at this stage I think, but everything was mostly under control!

Almost missing the youth hostel closing time at 00:30 was interesting, as was potentially pissing off 7 sleeping ramblers by sneaking in and getting changed etc. Anyway, I woke up on Sunday morning and I was severely dehydrated. On the Friday I had went for a 30-40 mile hard mountain bike ride for 5 hours, arrived in Ullapool - had a few beers and went to bed. When you share a room with 7 other people it inevitably gets very warm and by Saturday morning I was completely parched. The same happened on Saturday night too and the situation just worsens really as when you are dehydrated your body absorbs water at a reduced rate. I checked my weight after the weekend and I had lost 3.5 Kg! However my weight is recovering, I am now 73.5 Kg which is 1.5 Kg more than Monday.

You can see my photos of the wedding here.
Ewans photos (including 2 of the above) are here.