Archibald Photography Blog

Elisa & Ian met at work when Elisa took over Ian’s job as he got promoted. The couple were friends for a while before they started going out and both resisted for as long as they could before the inevitable happened! They were together for 10 years before they got married.

Ian proposed to Elisa in Japan on a holiday of a lifetime that the couple took to celebrate Ian’s 40th birthday. On the last day of the holiday, to Elisa’s surprise, Ian proposed. It had been a long day and they were in a restaurant sat side by side; they hadn’t eaten all day so Elisa was quite hungry. As Elisa told us “Ian kept trying to tell me something and I carried on eating saying “I’m listening, go on” but he wouldn’t say anything. Then he got impatient and said “… will you stop eating, I’m trying to tell you something!!”. I remember thinking “Oh, this had better be good” and turned to face him, then he proposed. So it was worth interrupting my dinner for!”

The couple decided early on that they wanted a really intimate wedding with immediate family only, and that they wanted to make an occasion of it for everyone. After discounting locations like New York (“too conveyor-like”) and Mexico (“too much preparation eg chest x-rays etc required!”), they decided on Scotland because they both love it. As Elisa’s parents live in Chile, they wanted somewhere with a bit of history.  They both liked the idea of splendid isolation, but needed to be reasonably near an airport to get everyone there in one piece.   In the end, they settled on Shieldhill Castle Hotel. They were greeted warmly and instantly liked the history (including alleged ghost), the setting and the owner’s dog Muttley!  As they settled on a midweek wedding, the couple virtually had the place to themselves and it was pretty much exactly as they planned it.

Elisa was willing to spend up to £500 on her perfect dress but was resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t get much choice and that the dress would likely cost her much more. Then she found the “near-perfect” dress in Pronuptia at a fraction of what what she was willing to pay. As they were having a small wedding, Elisa wanted a tea length dress but one that felt like a wedding dress and not an ivory bridesmaids dress; she told us “I thought I’d be over the top in a huge meringue!”.  Flowers for the day were provided by The Flower Shop in Biggar.

Elisa and Ian found Archibald Photography via a Google search and instantly liked Mark’s eye for pictures. She told us “his casual yet artistic style was exactly what we wanted and we were very pleased with the service.”Elisa and Ian had us design a 14″ x 10″ magazine style album as their main album and a raspberry silk bound smaller album for family.

The best thing about Elisa & Ian’s day was the emotion you get with a small, intimate wedding. Elisa told us “there were lots of tears (of joy of course!), we didn’t stop laughing the whole day through and it felt more like the union of two families rather than just our wedding because everyone already knew how Ian and I felt about each other. We only invited mum, dad and sibling on each side and that was the best thing – no arguments about people we didn’t know, no drunken fights etc”.

We asked Elisa and Ian what the funniest part of their day was and Elisa recalled “as I was walking with my dad to the chapel at the back of the hotel I realised my garter was sliding down my leg and was down by my knee. Vicki (Ian’s sister and my bridesmaid) quickly pulled it back up, but not before we got a fit of the giggles! Unfortunately Mark was in the chapel and didn’t catch it on camera but he tried!”

Here’s some more of our favourite images of their day.  Elisa and Ian were great for Mark to photograph because they were so happy they just laughed and danced all day!

Please feel free to tag yourself in these images via our Facebook page

Tags: archibald photography, Shieldhill Castle, wedding album, wedding photographer Edinburgh, wedding photographer Glasgow, wedding photography, wedding photography Scotland

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Weddings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.