Twenty-five years in the making, sealed in a Mackintosh music room.
This May, at House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park, I had the joy of pronouncing Chris and David husband and husband — a love story that began around the year 2000 in a Directory Enquiries call centre, and a couple I've now known myself for well over twenty-six years. Etta James sang them in. A Jack Russell called Bella Ciao carried the rings. And a room built from Charles Rennie Mackintosh's own designs held all of it.
Their story
It started with a plaster. Around the year 2000, Chris and David worked together in a Directory Enquiries call centre — Chris fetched David a plaster one day, and David, for his part, clocked a man who absolutely loved himself, the way he power-strutted across that office floor. It could have ended there, as these things so often do. It didn't. Twenty-five years later, they walked into House for an Art Lover together to Etta James's "At Last" — and honestly, no entrance song has ever been more thoroughly earned. I've known Chris myself for more than twenty-six years, so being asked to stand at the front of that room and marry him to David, in front of everyone who loves them, was one of the great privileges of doing this job.
The ceremony
A handfasting, secrets about each other read aloud to the room (some fonder than others, all of them true), the declarations, the rings — carried in, with absolute solemnity, on the collar of Bella Ciao the Jack Russell. For men of Chris and David's generation, who grew up with Section 28 and came out into a world that offered no wedding day at all, standing there as two grooms tying the knot never, ever stops feeling like a small miracle that we got to keep. That's exactly why I do this job.
Planning a wedding at House for an Art Lover?
House for an Art Lover sits in Bellahouston Park on Glasgow's south side, built from a competition design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald — high windows, art nouveau detail, and rooms that don't need much extra decorating to feel special. Same-sex marriage is fully legal in Scotland, and a humanist ceremony carries exactly the same legal weight as a registry office wedding, wherever you say your vows. Have a look at my LGBTQ+ humanist ceremonies page, the handfasting guide, and the paperwork, demystified — then come say hello.