The whole wedding, under one roof, in the middle of Airdrie.

Where the ceremony happens

This is an indoor wedding venue, which settles the Scottish weather question before anybody has to ask it. The hotel has two function suites. The Tudor Suite holds up to 200 seated for a meal and comes with its own entrance, its own facilities and an outdoor balcony. Parkers is the smaller, more intimate room, for up to 70 guests seated. Which one you use for the ceremony depends on your numbers, so ask the wedding coordinators how they will set the room and how the turnaround from ceremony to dinner works.

For Gary and Lynsay the room was set with rows either side of a white runner laid over the tartan carpet, white blossom trees at the front and a top table heaped with white roses, which doubled as the signing table. It worked beautifully: close enough that everybody felt part of it, with space at the back doors for a piper to play the bride in and the couple out. If you are in the Tudor Suite and the day is kind, the balcony is there for a breath of air between the ceremony and the meal. If it is not, nothing about your ceremony changes.

The hotel also has bedrooms, a 180-seat restaurant serving Indian and European food, and a beer garden, so the couple and the guests who are travelling can stay put for the night.

Getting there

The hotel is in the heart of Airdrie, in North Lanarkshire, and by its own reckoning a four-minute walk from the station. Airdrie is on the North Clyde line, with direct trains from Glasgow Queen Street taking under half an hour, and trains through to Edinburgh Waverley the other way, which makes this one of the easier venues to reach without a car for guests from either city. For those who do drive, there is free parking on site.

What I would ask about first

Book the wedding consultation with the coordinators early, and go in with three questions: which suite for your numbers, where the ceremony sits in the room, and how long the room needs between the ceremony and the meal if it is the same space.

Then the getting-ready. The hotel's standard check-in is 2pm, so if you are getting ready upstairs for an early afternoon ceremony, agree your room access with the hotel well in advance.

Two tips from the day itself. A piper indoors is gloriously loud, and standing them at the back doors to play you in and out is exactly right for a function suite. And think about an unplugged ceremony. Gary and Lynsay asked their guests to put the phones away and leave it to the photographer, and in a room like this, where everybody is close, it made a real difference. If you have children, give them a job: their son brought the rings and their daughter was a bridesmaid, and it made the ceremony about the whole family.

The legal bit, handled

A humanist wedding in Scotland is legally binding anywhere in Scotland, a hotel function suite included, 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 your story, so a hotel ceremony feels like yours and nobody else's. I'm a humanist wedding celebrant based in Kelvinbridge in Glasgow, covering the city and the towns around it, Airdrie and Coatbridge included.

Want to see how a day here actually goes? Read Gary and Lynsay's wedding here: a borrowed-bag meet-cute outside a Coatbridge pub, a proposal in an empty living room with a Cinderella ring box, and a piper to see them out.

More venues around Glasgow and Lanarkshire I know inside out: Crossbasket Castle · Mar Hall · The Grosvenor · The Exchange · Citation · Òran Mór · House for an Art Lover · Glasgow wedding celebrant