A navigator, a mapmaker, and a wedding that always knew true north.
Andrew and Alicia were married at 2pm on the 17th of August 2024, in a castle wedding venue in South Lanarkshire, about half an hour outside Glasgow. Andrew stood at the front in his kilt; Alicia arrived in a fitted white gown with her bouquet in hand. Between a groom who once navigated Royal Navy ships and a bride who makes maps for a living, this was always a couple built around finding their way to each other — and on the day, in a wood-panelled room at Crossbasket Castle, that's exactly what we celebrated.
Their story
Andrew and Alicia first met a few years back in Glasgow's West End, and dated casually while both of them were busy with their own lives — Alicia finishing her final year of university back in Oban, the two of them keeping things going mostly by phone. There's a properly daft chapter in the middle of this story: Alicia lost her phone in the snow, and rather than let that be the end of it, Andrew went looking for her on LinkedIn to track her down — and was highly amused to discover her profile photo had her in a hard hat. When they reconnected properly, they did what any sensible couple should do before committing to the real thing: a trial weekend away to Loch Tay, just to see if they actually got on as a couple day to day. It went brilliantly, and that was that. These days home is Andrew's Jaguar F-Type (a hard corner between them is known, affectionately, as "a spinnie") and two cats, Alan the Ragdoll and Brian the British Shorthair, who I'm told run the house.
The proposal
Andrew is ex-Royal Navy — he served as a navigator — and Alicia's own work is in mapmaking, so a "true north" theme running through this relationship was almost inevitable. It carried straight into the engagement ring, which the two of them chose together at the Argyll Arcade in Glasgow, set with a compass motif. Andrew proposed the August before the wedding, on Alicia's birthday, at a small tearoom tucked down a hidden lane in Finnieston — having quietly asked her parents' permission beforehand. Alicia said yes, and from a hidden Finnieston lane the two of them plotted a course to Crossbasket Castle a year later.
The ceremony
We built the ceremony around that same idea of finding your bearings in each other. At its heart was a handfasting with two tartans the couple had chosen themselves, ribbons looped and tied as the promises were spoken. For the reading, we turned to Neil Gaiman's "All I Know About Love" — a poem that gets to the heart of what a marriage actually is, closing on the thought that "home is wherever you are both together." Fitting, for a navigator and a mapmaker who'd spent years finding their way back to one another. The rest — the vows, the family in the room, the laughs only two people who know each other properly can share — stayed between Andrew, Alicia and the room on the day, exactly as it should.
Planning a Crossbasket Castle wedding?
Andrew and Alicia's wedding was my first ceremony at Crossbasket Castle, so I don't yet have a dedicated venue guide for the place — but it's a proper castle wedding venue in South Lanarkshire, roughly half an hour's drive from Glasgow, and well within reach for anyone looking at venues in that part of the country. If you're marrying somewhere like it, have a look at the wedding paperwork guide for how the legal side works in Scotland, and the handfasting page if you like the idea of ribbons and tartan in your own ceremony.