Getting married in the hold of a lighthouse ship.
Fingal is moored at Alexandra Dock in Leith: a former Northern Lighthouse Board ship that now bills itself as Scotland's only static floating hotel. She was the last ship the Blythswood Shipbuilding Company ever built in Glasgow, which pleases this Glasgow-based celebrant more than it probably should. I married a couple aboard at the end of May 2025, in the Ballroom, with a half-past-three start and a quaich.
A working ship first
Fingal was commissioned in 1963 and spent thirty years stationed in Oban and six in Stromness, carrying lighthouse keepers, supplies and repair crews out to the lights of the west coast and the north. She retired from that service in 2000, spent fourteen years on the River Fal in Cornwall under another name, and was bought by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust in 2014 and towed up to Leith. A £5m conversion followed, and she opened as a hotel in January 2019, with her cabins named after Stevenson lighthouses. You feel that the minute you walk up the gangway: this is a ship, not a hotel dressed up as one.
The Ballroom
The Ballroom sits in what used to be the ship's hold. The timber-lined walls follow the curve of the hull, and a long skylight runs down the middle of the ceiling, so the daylight falls straight onto the aisle. At the far end, two sweeping staircases climb to a raised gallery; the hotel pitches them as your entrance, and it's hard to argue. For my ceremony it was set with rows of chairs either side of the aisle and a small signing table at the front, and it needed very little else.
It's an intimate ship. The hotel quotes dining for up to 60 in the Ballroom and 110 for a drinks reception, and says its 22 guest cabins sleep up to 44, so this suits couples who like their guest list short. Weddings are exclusive use: the whole ship is yours for the day.
The rest of the ship
After the ceremony, the hotel takes everyone up to the Lighthouse Restaurant & Bar for fizz and canapés under its Art Deco ceiling, then back down to the Ballroom for dinner. The Bridge, once the ship's command centre, is kept for elopements and small dinners (the brochure says up to 12), with the original telegraphs out on its decks. I haven't married anyone on the Bridge yet, so if you're thinking of eloping, go and stand in it first. The Skerryvore Suite, with its own private deck, is where the newlyweds sleep.
What I would check first
The turnaround. Ask how long the Ballroom takes to reset for dinner and how long your guests will be upstairs, because that sets the rhythm of your whole afternoon. Then access: guests come aboard by the gangway, and a ship has stairs everywhere, so if anyone in your party struggles with steps, ask about the guest lift well before the day. For photographs, the hotel suggests the Engine Room, and ten minutes on the dockside with the black hull and the flags behind you is worth it.
And if you like a bit of Scottish tradition, a quaich suits a room like this, all warm timber and gold railings.
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, around the two of you and nobody else. I'm based in Glasgow, and I'm a humanist wedding celebrant covering Edinburgh, from the Old Town closes down to Leith's waterfront. My Edinburgh wedding celebrant page has more on the city.
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More Edinburgh & Fife venues I know inside out: Riddles Court · Kimpton Charlotte Square · Royal College of Physicians · The Den at Culross · West Lothian Burgh Halls