Marry who you love. I'll make it official.
I'm a gay man, a Humanist Society Scotland celebrant — and when I stand at the front of a same-sex wedding, I'm not an ally being professionally welcoming. I'm one of us, doing the best job in the world. Every couple I marry gets a ceremony written from scratch; LGBTQ+ couples also get a celebrant who knows exactly what that day can mean, because our right to it was won in living memory.
This is your tradition too
When equal marriage arrived in Scotland at Hogmanay 2014, humanist celebrants were there conducting some of the very first same-sex weddings in the country — humanists had campaigned for it for years. So when you choose a humanist ceremony, you're choosing the tradition that showed up for us first. Handfastings, quaichs, ring warmings, readings — every Scottish ritual on this site belongs to you as much as anyone, and none of them care who's holding whose hand.
No awkward scripts, no "bride and groom" autopilot
Because I write every word fresh, nothing arrives with the wrong assumptions baked in. Wife and wife, husband and husband, partners for life — your words, your names, your story told the way you tell it. Two dresses, two kilts, or one of each; walking in together or meeting at the front; "I do" or something you wrote at your kitchen table. I recently married Emily & Gill — two brides, gin in the quaich, and rings warmed by every hand in the room — and that ceremony sounded like nobody on earth but them.
Twenty-five years in the making — Chris & David
This May, at House for an Art Lover in Glasgow, I had the joy of pronouncing Chris and David husband and husband — a love story that began around the year 2000 in a Directory Enquiries call centre, when Chris fetched David a plaster and David clocked a man who absolutely loved himself, the way he power-strutted across that office floor. Twenty-five years later they walked in together to Etta James's "At Last" — and honestly, no entrance song has ever been better earned. There was a handfasting, there were secrets read aloud, and the rings arrived on the collar of Bella Ciao the Jack Russell. I've known Chris for over twenty-six years, and marrying him to David in a Mackintosh music room, in front of everyone they love, is exactly why I do this job. For the men of our generation — the ones who grew up with Section 28, who came out into a world that offered no wedding day at all — standing there as two grooms tie the knot never, ever stops feeling like a small miracle that we got to keep.
Legally married, anywhere in Scotland
Same-sex marriage is fully legal in Scotland, and a humanist ceremony is as legally binding as any registry office — on a beach, a hillside, a city room or a glasshouse. Couples travel here from countries where marrying isn't possible at all, and go home married; the paperwork is far simpler than you'd expect, and there's no residency requirement — see my elopement and destination weddings page. Whatever your day looks like, it will be built with the same care, the same humour and the same pride — the everyday kind and the capital-P kind.