Category Archives: Fingask Castle

Just a week after shooting a wedding at Fingask Castle I was back there again for another! As often happens, wedding venues pop up like busses. I can go months without visiting a certain venue and then I get to go twice in two weeks! From the moment I left home in Glasgow in the rain I knew that, compared to the last wedding, however, it was going to be rather wet and the sun failed to make an appearance all day. Usually this is just an ‘Oh well, it is Scotland after all’ minor irritation but I arrived at the castle to witness some major restructuring of the day as, unfortunately for Shen and Calum, the ceremony was due to be held outside and many of their plans for the day were based around this. The Long Gallery in the castle that was used instead, although certainly very lovely, clearly didn’t offer quite as much room as the gardens in front of the castle!

After the quick reshuffle the stage was set for one of the most interesting ceremonies I have witnessed. To begin with there was a lovely ceremony by interfaith minister Caroline Cormack but then, after that part, there followed a Tibetan blessing performed by Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche, founder of Samye Ling Monestary in Dumfrieshire and founder of Rokpa NGO who Shen works with.

As a photographer I am accustomed to slinking around in the shadows to photograph wedding ceremonies – I strongly believe that the way I photograph a wedding ceremony should have no impact on the proceedings and I always hope that nobody is even aware of my presence. This was, however, a trickier wedding to photograph. Shen and Calum were very keen for photographs but there was very little space and they had a beautiful, but large, archway of flowers to negotiate with the camera. Luckily the minister was very relaxed about the whole thing and I actually took the unusual step of grabbing a seat in the audience that gave me an excellent view. I then moved up to behind the archway to try and grab a few shots of the Buddist portion of the ceremony – not an easy job as Shen and Calum had their backs to the rest of the room. One thing I remember vividly was that the room was very warm and, unfortunately for me, in my haste I had chosen a place to stand that was directly next to a radiator…

After the ceremony, whilst the majority of the guests milled around in the rooms downstairs, we took advantage of a short break in the heavy rain to nip outside quickly with umbrellas for a few photographs of the bride and groom and then some simple family pictures.