Thirteen years engaged, and worth the wait — Colin & Lisa Marie at Glencoe.
Colin and Lisa Marie married at 1pm on Sunday the 26th of April 2026, at the Isles of Glencoe Hotel, right on the shore of Loch Leven at Ballachulish with the mountains rising straight out of the water behind them. They'd been together since 2011 and engaged since 2013 — so this was thirteen years in the making, and by the time they got to that lochside, they'd already built the whole life the wedding was celebrating: two weans, a home in Kilmarnock, and an easy, unshakeable partnership.
It started on a bus
If you're expecting a candlelit restaurant, think again. Colin and Lisa Marie met in 2011 on a bus to RockNess — Colin already aboard, minding his own business, when Lisa Marie ended up in the seats across the aisle. His opening line was not, by his own admission, Shakespeare: "Is your pal suffering a bit there?" Somehow it worked. They bonded over a bottle of Buckfast, spent the weekend on Paolo Nutini, Frightened Rabbit and Kasabian, swapped numbers on the bus home, and that was that. Within six months they'd a wee flat in Shawlands and a standing arrangement of Saturday pub crawls. In 2013 Ruaridh came along, they moved down to Ayrshire, and two years later Kalli completed the set — a boy and a girl, exactly what they'd always hoped for.
A babygrow, and a very long engagement
The proposal is a belter. Colin did it properly — first a pint with Lisa Marie's dad, Paul, at the Cochrane Inn to ask his blessing (Paul said yes straight away, with a wee tear in his eye). Then, on Christmas Eve, with the fire on, Colin handed Lisa Marie their one-month-old son Ruaridh wearing a babygrow that read, in tiny letters, "Mummy, will you marry Daddy?", and got down on one knee. A few screams and a good few OMGs later, she said yes. That was 2013. The wedding was 2026 — thirteen years engaged, which the two of them, both gloriously laid-back, will happily admit to. But they were never putting things off. In those thirteen years they had two kids, bought a house and built a life. The wedding was simply the last piece of the jigsaw.
The day at the Isles of Glencoe
There are few places in Scotland that can hold a moment like this one, and the Isles of Glencoe Hotel on Loch Leven is one of them — the water dead still, the peaks going on forever. A piper played Colin and his best man Ruaridh in to the Braveheart theme; Lisa Marie walked in on her dad Paul's arm to a cover of "Can't Help Falling in Love." Both of the weans were part of it, front and centre where they belonged. We told their story properly — the bus, the Buckfast, wee Ruaridh lamping other bairns at soft play, Kalli's poetry and her legendary golf-ball good-luck ritual — the room laughing and greeting in equal measure, exactly as a Glencoe wedding should. Then the mountains did the rest for the photographs.
What made it theirs
What I loved about Colin and Lisa Marie is that the ceremony didn't have to invent anything — it just had to be true. Thirteen years, two kids and a home already told you these two were the real thing; the wedding was the celebration of a life well underway, not the start of one. That's a humanist ceremony at its best: your actual story, in your words, in a place that means something. And if you're going to wait thirteen years, you might as well do it under the mountains of Glencoe.
Photography: Abrightside Photography.
Thinking of Glencoe yourselves?
If Colin and Lisa Marie's day has you picturing your own, here's my guide to getting married in Glencoe, and the Isles of Glencoe Hotel in particular. Just the two of you? That's an elopement, and the glen is made for it. You can read more real weddings here.