Woodland on every side, ten minutes off the M8.
Dalziel Park Hotel & Golf Club sits in 250 acres of woodland on the outskirts of Motherwell, with a nine-hole golf course, eighteen bedrooms and a set of function suites. It's four minutes' drive from Carfin station, which has direct trains to Glasgow and Edinburgh, and about ten minutes from the M8, so guests from both cities get there without fuss. It's run by Lisini, a family business with a handful of Lanarkshire venues. I married a couple here on a Saturday afternoon in July 2024.
The room I stood in
The ceremony was set in front of a wall of dark patterned curtains, with French doors on either side opening onto a paved patio and a red-leaved tree glowing through the glass. A heart-shaped arch dressed with roses stood at the head of a cream aisle, the signing table sat right beside it, and the light came in from both sides. On a July afternoon, that side light is kind to everybody in the photographs.
That's one wedding in one room, so I can't tell you how every suite here feels. The hotel has a newly refurbished Cedar Suite and the Woodlands Suite, which looks out over the ninth hole and has its own private wedding garden. Go and see both, ideally at the hour you'd marry.
The question to ask first
Dalziel Park's own wedding terms spell out something every couple should understand before booking. A ceremony can be added for a fee when it's held in the same suite as your reception, and if your reception is in the Cedar Suite you can hire the Woodlands Suite for the ceremony instead, at a higher fee. So the real question is whether you marry in the room you'll eat in, and if you do, where your guests go and for how long while it's turned round.
The terms also say there may be another wedding reception at Dalziel Park on the same day, so ask whether that's the case on your date, and how the two parties are kept apart. None of that is a problem if you know it early. It only becomes one when it's a surprise.
A quaich and a song
The couple shared a quaich, and a song was sung live in the middle of the ceremony. Both work best when they're planned like cues in a play: who brings the quaich forward and what's in it, who gives the singer the nod, and whether they need a microphone or a speaker for a backing track. The hotel's wedding coordinators and its master of ceremonies can take a lot of this off your hands if they have your running order early. The packages also include exclusive use of one of the hotel's wedding gardens, which is where your photographs will be.
The legal bit, handled
A humanist wedding in Scotland is legally binding, and as a Humanist Society Scotland celebrant I look after every legal word of it: the declarations, the schedule, the witnesses. I write every ceremony from scratch, so yours will sound like the two of you and nobody else. I'm a humanist wedding celebrant covering Glasgow and Lanarkshire: Motherwell, Wishaw, Carfin, Hamilton, Airdrie and Coatbridge. My Glasgow wedding celebrant page has more on the area I cover.
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More Glasgow and Lanarkshire venues I know inside out: The Tudor Hotel, Airdrie · Crossbasket Castle · Strathaven Hotel · The Busby Hotel · Glazert Country House Hotel · Boclair House