A beautiful pastel-themed wedding at Cottiers Theatre, Glasgow

 

From ring-shopping for their joint proposal to buying their wedding gowns, Amy and Gemma planned every step of their beautiful big day together.

Here, they share all the details from their gorgeous wedding, captured by the talented Glitter & Twigs.

 

Amy and Gemma hit it off the moment they met on a trip to Manchester Pride.

“We spent pretty much the full weekend together (much to the delight of the friends who we had come to Manchester with!) and began a long-distance relationship from there,” remembers Amy.

After two years together an engagement was on the cards and the night before they were due to fly to Mexico on holiday Amy set a romantic scene, printing off 25 photos of the couple and hanging them down the length of their hallway.

“On the back of each, I wrote one reason I was excited to spend the rest of my life with Gemma,” she says.

“The last photograph was hanging right in front of our living room door, and when Gemma opened it, I was on one knee holding her ring out to her.”

Equally as romantic was Gemma’s proposal.

It was going to be Amy’s birthday while they were in Mexico so Gemma asked her to open her birthday presents that night.

One of the gifts was a story book of their relationship which she had commissioned a local artist to create and on the last page was written, “Will you marry me?” Aww!

Gemma is a bit of a photography hobbyist and had a clear idea of what she wanted for their wedding photography, so much so that it was their number one planning priority.

Amy says, “When we came across Inga at Glitter & Twigs we knew we had found ‘the one’!”

The next stage was finding the perfect venue and they fell instantly for the rustic romance of Cottiers.

And while they are both agnostic, Amy was brought up going to church and she says Cottiers, being an old church, felt like the perfect “marriage” between the tradition of a church wedding and their humanist ceremony.

Taking their venue as a starting point, the women worked with a pastel colour palette and spent months raiding charity shops and the Barras for old frames, vases and glassware to tie in with their romantic vibe.

A paint-spattered easel became a star buy for their table plan, while Amy paid tribute to her beloved granny, (who sadly passed away before the wedding) by including her old woven basket for their cards.

To entertain their younger guests the couple ordered bubble guns to shoot while the grown-ups threw confetti.

But it wasn’t straightforward.

“We realised they made a horrible sound when the triggers were pressed and the week before the wedding we spent a whole evening performing what can only be described as surgery to remove the sound component – not something we thought would be part of the planning process!” Amy says.

While the couple had had great fun buying their engagement rings together, dress-shopping was not so much fun for Amy.

“I found the whole experience so stressful that I actually ended up ordering my dress on ASOS,” she says.

“When I saw it I instantly fell in love, although it did feel strange collecting my wedding dress from the collect+ counter in Asda!”

For Gemma things were somewhat easier.

An evening’s browsing in Wed2B with Amy ended up with her buying her A-line tulle-skirted gown on the spot.

“Excitement took over,” she said. “It definitely wasn’t traditional that my bride was with me when I bought my dress, but it worked for us!”

 

The couple walked down the aisle to string quartet Arta playing Canon in D and it all got very emotional for Amy.

“I cried so much, which didn’t make for very flattering photos!” she says.

“Gemma walked down after me and was absolutely beaming and looked beautiful.”

Humanist Susan Douglas-Scott was chosen to perform the ceremony.

“As a same-sex couple, we felt honoured to be married by one half of the first same-sex couple to be legally married in Scotland,” says Amy.

“A few of our guests commented that they learned so much about us as a couple from our ceremony, which was exactly what we were going for!”

 

Keeping things personal, bridesmaid Natalie, who is a poet, wrote a spoken word piece for her speech.

“It was incredibly funny and touching,” smiles Amy. “I cried through all of the speeches, including my own.”

Then it was on to the evening reception with “lots of dancing and shots!”

Amy remembers the end of the night as a particular highlight.

“Ending with Loch Lomond and seeing the confused looks on all our English guests’ faces was hilarious,” she smiles.