The proposal had to wait until after the cheese tour.

Their story

They knew of each other from the first week of medicine at Glasgow. Knew of, mind. Different circles, a nod in the corridor, and five years of that. The first proper conversation came in 2019 at a Burns supper in a pal's flat, where Daniel stood up and read the Address to the Haggis. Emma-Rose was impressed. His pronunciation was spot on and he plainly understood every word of the old Scots, which surprised her, because until then her main impression of Daniel was a man who turned up to fancy dress painted head to toe in bright colours. He once went to the medics' ball as a chilli pepper.

She was hardly one to talk. Daniel's first impression was a girl with a beguiling, slightly confusing accent, joined at the hip with her best pal Becky, and as likely to appear as Miss Piggy or a bright green snake as in scrubs on the ward. Then they landed in the same placement group, Emma-Rose clocked how clever he was, and decided he was worth keeping around.

Daniel started finding reasons to visit her flat on Woodlands Road, about ten minutes' walk from my own front door. Pot-luck dinners. Love Island. The real reason was that Emma-Rose would be there, and it took him a while to admit it. There was also the phone call during SNIMS, the annual sports weekend for Scottish and Northern Irish medical students, when Daniel rang her to report that he was stuck on a roof dressed as a Baywatch lifeguard. As I told the chapel, only Daniel could manage that.

After their final exams came a trip to Skye with friends, a long car journey where something clicked, and a hard slog up the Old Man of Storr where Daniel's chat was the only thing keeping Emma-Rose going. They got home and lockdown landed. Daniel moved straight into the Woodlands Road bubble: eight people, four bedrooms, one bathroom. With close confinement and a fair bit of coaxing from Becky they became a couple, and then both of them started work as doctors in the middle of a pandemic. The one bathroom did its bit. They had their own place soon after. Later came two years with Daniel mostly in Dundee and Emma-Rose in Glasgow, when the best thing on her phone was his "on my way home" text after an on-call shift.

The proposal, and the dairy

These two love a holiday. Barbados, Japan, Orlando, Paris, St Lucia. Emma-Rose had her nails done before more than one of those trips, just in case. Daniel's view was that a proposal should never be allowed to wreck a well-planned itinerary, and that it needed the right place and the right ring.

The ring came from the Argyle Arcade, where Daniel was delighted to find the jewellers will keep the champagne coming if you look like a buyer. He took Emma-Rose along "just to get an idea", made the fatal error of telling the jeweller there was no budget, then went back in secret: once on his own, once with Emma-Rose's mum, who hid a six-hour round trip from her daughter, and once with his own mum and sister for the final sign-off.

Lining up annual leave for two doctors is a puzzle of its own, so it was a long weekend on Mull in November, with a forecast of six hours of sunshine across four days. Daniel had one window, on the Friday. The trouble was that the dairy on Mull only runs its winter tours on Friday mornings, and very little comes between Daniel and a block of cheese. So the cheese went first. Then, full of it, an hour's drive to Knockvologan on the far western coast of the island, foot down and chasing the sunset, because a scramble down a gravel slope to the beach in the dark would not have helped his chances. He asked as the last of the light went and the drizzle blew in. She said yes.

The ceremony

Emma-Rose walked in with her dad. They had asked their guests to keep their phones away, so the whole room watched it with their own eyes, and after the signing I called everybody forward to get a photo of their own. I wrote their story in two voices, the way they gave it to me: Emma-Rose's version of Daniel and Daniel's version of Emma-Rose, so the chilli pepper got answered by the green snake.

Two friends read. Carol read from Dolly Alderton's Everything I Know About Love, the piece about love being loud and also very quiet, fireworks one day and a text about loo roll the next. Hannah read Len Pennie's The Vow, which lands on three words I repeated back to the room because they said it all: forever is fine.

The handfasting was their idea, with two pieces of fabric they had chosen to stand for each of them. Three loops: Emma-Rose's love for Daniel, Daniel's love for Emma-Rose, and the love of everybody in the stalls. Then they pulled their hands back and tied the knot. They also asked me to take out the bit where guests shout back "We do", because they wanted the promises to be theirs alone. Conor brought the rings, and when I declared them married the stalls made the kind of noise that building was made to hold.

Daniel plans every holiday to the minute and Emma-Rose laughs when the bus doesn't come. He is teaching her aeroplanes, one round of Name That Plane at a time. She reads a book in half an hour and watches him take three days over one. What they want next is more of the same, with one upgrade: Daniel home every night to cook a proper dinner.

Marrying at Glasgow University Chapel yourself?

If you studied or worked at the university, this is your chapel, and I would claim it. For Emma-Rose and Daniel it closed a circle that started in their first week of medicine. The eligibility rules have shifted over the years, so check your date with the university's events team before you book anything else.

Think about the light. At around one o'clock on a bright June day the stained glass was putting pools of colour on the pale floor at the front, exactly where the two of them turned to face the room as a married couple. Tell your photographer to look down as well as up.

Go unplugged. The room deserves your guests' full attention, and a photographer has it covered. Split your music the way these two did: a piper for the arrival and to play everybody out, strings inside, where a quartet suits the stone and the carved oak. And it is a long room with a high roof, so ask your readers to slow right down, and ask the chapel team what they have in the way of a microphone.

There is more on the room, its history and how the day runs in my Glasgow University Chapel venue guide, and if you are marrying round here my West End of Glasgow page is the place to start. I live in Kelvinbridge, ten minutes down the hill, so couples booking me for Glasgow weddings pay no travel fees. If the handfasting caught your eye there is a full guide to handfasting in Scotland and more on my handfasting celebrant page, and if you are choosing words for friends to read, start with my humanist wedding readings.