A Lorimer castle in the Ayrshire countryside.
Rowallan Castle sits in its own estate out past Kilmaurs, a few minutes from Kilmarnock and about forty from Glasgow. The New Castle was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1902, and it is exactly what you would hope for from that: dark panelling, deep plasterwork, tall windows and rooms that already look like something before anyone hangs a thing in them. I have married a couple in the Ceremony Room, and I would happily do it again.
The Ceremony Room, and how it behaves
Ceremonies happen in the Ceremony Room, which takes up to 120 guests. It is panelled in dark wood with ornate plasterwork overhead and tall windows down one side, and it does something most function suites never manage: it looks like somewhere, rather than like a room hired for the day. The light is low and soft, which flatters everybody and gives your photographer something to work with instead of something to fight.
My advice is to leave it alone. The couple I married there ran lanterns down the aisle and added essentially nothing else, and the room did the rest. Dark panelling swallows fussy styling anyway. Candles and something low along the aisle will get you further than anything tall or bright.
It rewards a smaller list. At 120 it is full; nearer sixty or eighty it feels intimate in a way a bigger room cannot fake, and everybody can hear you without a microphone. The rest of the first floor, the library and the ballroom included, carries the reception, and there is a croquet lawn to the south for a marquee if your numbers run well past what the castle seats.
What I would ask about
Ask about a piper. The approach to the castle is a proper walk, and a piper outside turns it into an arrival rather than a wander up a path. It is the single best money-for-atmosphere decision at this venue.
Ask early about music and who operates it, because the venue runs the speakers in the ceremony room and they will want your tracks in advance. Ask where they would like you for photographs if the Ayrshire weather does what Ayrshire weather does, because the interiors are good enough that a wet day is genuinely not a disaster here. And if you are bringing a dog, say so early rather than on the morning: mine walked up the aisle with the rings and nobody blinked, but that was arranged well in advance.
On getting there: it is rural, so think about your guests. Kilmarnock is the nearest town and Glasgow is roughly forty minutes up the road, which makes taxis and overnight rooms worth sorting early rather than late. Dates and details come from the estate directly at rowallancastle.com.
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 nothing in it is off a shelf, and if you want something of your own family in there, whether that is a handfasting cloth, a quaich or something nobody has asked me for before, that is the part I enjoy most. I'm a humanist wedding celebrant covering Ayrshire: Kilmaurs, Kilmarnock, Troon, Ayr, Alloway and the coast.
Want to see how a day here actually goes? Read Egle & John's full wedding story: a fireman's hat on the first date, a proposal with a ring made of three carrots, a piece of amber on every seat, and a dog called Cookie in charge of the rings.
More Ayrshire and west-coast venues I know: Brig o' Doon House · Piersland House · Seamill Hydro · Riverside Lodge · Saltcoats Town Hall · Isle of Arran · Sherbrooke Castle Hotel · Mar Hall