Twenty-nine years together, and nobody ever proposed.

Their story

This one starts on Jack's Road in Saltcoats, at St Andrew's Academy, where Jamie was a year above Clare and I was knocking about the same corridors. They barely spoke. Clare was convinced Jamie did not like her, and in fairness to Clare, Jamie was not the chattiest boy in his year. The closest they came was the Christmas dance, where the country dancing had been drilled into all of us and Jamie birled Clare across the hall at a speed nobody would describe as romantic.

It took a bar to sort it out. In the summer of 1997 they were both training to be teachers and both working behind the bar at Sullivan's in Saltcoats. Clare walked in for her first shift expecting it to be awkward. They talked the whole night and found out they loved the same music. On results day they took the train to Glasgow together, strictly as pals, to find their names on the boards in the university Cloisters, then celebrated by sharing one chicken sandwich in the McDonald's at Four Corners.

Then came 31 August 1997. The news about Princess Diana was coming through on every television in the country, and Jamie decided this was the moment to ask Clare out. First date the following Thursday: the Hipflask, then on to the Metro, which if you grew up on that bit of the coast in the nineties was the full itinerary. Clare told nobody. Her brother Derek worked it out anyway, and her mum, without being told a thing, talked her out of one outfit and into another. Jamie still remembers the dress.

Clare has four brothers, and Jamie came pre-approved by all of them. Meeting his mum Trisha for the first time was harder going: the wine open, Michael Bolton on, a larger-than-life family friend conducting the interview, and the family dog Caesar having had an accident on the carpet earlier that evening. Clare carried on as if every bit of it were perfectly normal. She passed.

Jamie qualified in history, Clare in geography, and there were four years of Jamie teaching in Perth and driving home every weekend in a wee Seat Ibiza. Then back to Ayrshire. In 2012 Clare became head of social subjects at a secondary in North Ayrshire, and six weeks later the new depute head walked in. It was Jamie. They spent over eleven years in the same building, both in the senior leadership team from 2016, and I worked alongside them there until last year. Most couples could not do it. These two made it look easy.

The ceremony, and Cliff

Music has run through the whole thing. Their first gig together was Oasis on the Be Here Now tour at the SECC, and last summer, thanks entirely to Jamie's tenacity, they saw Oasis again at Heaton Park. So the room needed to know that a very young Jamie had been deeply into Shakin' Stevens. And Cliff Richard. He would rather that had stayed between us. I had brought a framed Cliff montage along, and I told the guests it was just as well I had not got him that for his wedding present. You can see how that went.

There was no proposal, which is the best bit. They had been talking about marriage for years, and in September 2025 they stopped talking. Lunch at Piersland on a Saturday. Back for a proper look on the Wednesday. Booked on the spot. Then a surprise save-the-date for everybody they love, which nobody saw coming. As I told the room, 29 years in the making, folks: great things come to those who wait.

Clare walked in on the arm of her dad and all four of her brothers, with Nicola Mason singing her down the aisle. Then the secrets. Clare told me she loves Jamie's loyalty, his quiet kindness and his thirst for knowledge, whether that is a weighty book on American presidents or Celtic highlights from 1974; she added that there is not a serial killer Jamie has not read up on. What needs work: he finds an urgent job upstairs at the exact moment dinner is being plated. Jamie loves Clare's determination, her habit of going away and fixing things (her father's daughter) and her warm optimism. What needs work: she wants to be at the airport three hours before the flight, then keeps checking the gate.

Niamh read After Twenty-Eight Years, a piece about love built out of ordinary days and shared workplaces, which could not have fitted these two better. Clare and Jamie each took a taper and lit a unity candle together. James read Whitney Hanson's Wedding Poem, the one about a love like a river, and Gilbert brought up the rings. Earlier that week Clare had said something to me that stuck: nothing in life is ever really guaranteed, but marriage is the one thing you can commit to for certain. They did, in the sunshine, with everybody shouting "We do!" back at them.

Marrying at Piersland House yourself?

Do what Clare and Jamie did and have lunch there before you book. Sitting in the restaurant as a customer tells you more about how the staff look after a room than any brochure will, and it is how they knew.

If the weather lets you, get married outside. We used the lawn, with the couple and me standing in front of the red brick garden wall and its carved sandstone pillars, and the guests facing us with the house behind them. On a sunny day that puts the light on your faces, which your photographer will love, and in your guests' eyes, which they will love less, so put out water and a basket of fans. Outdoors a voice disappears into a garden quickly: I wore a lapel mic on the lawn and would for any outdoor ceremony there. Agree the indoor room with the venue when you book the garden. This is the west coast.

The lawn is big enough to get every guest into one photograph, arms in the air, straight after the ceremony, and the venue seats up to 94 for the wedding meal, so a list around that size fills the place without crowding it. Troon beach is about 500 yards away if you want sand in your pictures.

There is more on the house and its history in my Piersland House venue guide, and if you are marrying anywhere along this coast my Ayrshire wedding celebrant page is the place to start. If the candle appealed there is a full guide to unity candle ceremonies, some ideas for humanist wedding readings, and my guide to outdoor humanist weddings in Scotland if you fancy the garden.