Forty years after Primary Five, two glasses of red gave her the nerve to message him.

Their story

Most couples will tell you they met on an app, or on a night out, or through pals. These two first clapped eyes on each other at nine years old, in Primary Five in Newton Mearns, and went right through high school together. Alasdair thought Lisa was something even then. He was far too shy to do anything about it, and Lisa was quiet too, so for years there were two young people with something between them and absolutely no idea what to do with it. Then school finished and life sent them off in very different directions.

Lisa grabbed the world with both hands: six months on a kibbutz in Israel, then South Africa, France and Spain, doing hair and nails and working her way round. She came home and built a business of her own looking after other people's pets, cats especially, which becomes important later. Alasdair studied graphic design, worked all sorts of jobs, and was the one his family could always count on to turn up.

Then, nearly forty years on, Alasdair posted a selfie from a hospital waiting room, about to go in for a hip operation, captioned something along the lines of: I'm next on the butcher's block. Late that night Lisa saw it. She thought about it. She went upstairs, poured herself two glasses of Châteauneuf-du-Pape for Dutch courage, came back down and messaged him to ask how the operation had gone. He replied. They kept talking. Before long he was invited round, and he arrived on crutches with a bottle of red. Lisa opened the door and her first thought was that he was shorter than she remembered. They have not stopped laughing since.

What followed is what Lisa calls the great Scottish education she never knew she was missing. Alasdair drives, Lisa had not seen much of Scotland in years, and he fixed that with planned routes and restaurants researched along the way, always somewhere worth stopping. Then there is the small stuff. When her phone drops, he picks it up. Her coffee is waiting every morning with the mug turned round, so she does not burn her hand on the handle. On the terrace I asked everybody to listen to what Lisa had told me about him: "He lets me be me. He makes me proud of who I am. He makes me like myself again."

The household is completed by Kallie, a ragamuffin with the biggest personality in any room he chooses to enter, and Layla, a British shorthair who keeps things elegant.

The proposal, and the wrong ring

About a week before Lisa's 49th birthday, a photo landed on her phone: Alasdair, in a grey velvet suit, standing in a shop, asking her to guess where he was. She guessed a coffee shop. She was not correct. He took her to Bar Banco in Giffnock, an Italian he had driven past every day for years thinking, one day. He had borrowed one of her rings to get the size, which turned out to be the wrong ring for the wrong finger, so the jeweller told him to get her to wear it for the photos and bring her back in to have it resized. Which is exactly what happened.

Not long after that brand new hip, he got down on one knee in a full restaurant. The room went silent, Lisa said yes, the room roared, and I am reliably informed he got back up with only a few muffled grunts. That is true love, folks.

The ceremony

When I arrived at lunchtime the team had the Ceremony Suite set out with chairs in case the weather turned. The sky stayed grey and dry, and by one o'clock the terrace was dressed too: gold chairs, a white arch wound with greenery, white roses in glass vases, and the loch right behind it all. Lisa's mum came in first, a wee page boy scattered rose petals up the aisle, and Lisa walked in with her brother Antony while Pippa Reid-Foster played the harp. Alasdair was waiting in his tweed and kilt, looking, as I told the guests, handsome and a wee bit nervous.

The secrets were the part everybody was waiting for. I had asked each of them, separately, for three things they love about the other and one thing that could do with a bit of work. Lisa said Alasdair makes her feel adored, that he is the kindest man she knows, and that he lights up watching her laugh. His area for development: he does not always read the room, he can talk at considerable length, and he has been known to repeat himself. Alasdair loves her golden eyes and her naughty, cheeky laugh, and her love of animals. Coming back from Balloch one day, Lisa stopped the traffic to rescue an escaped dog running into oncoming cars. In Alasdair's words, she is Superwoman with a cat blanket for a cape. Her area for development is patience in slow traffic, which in Scotland covers most of the time you spend in a car.

After the vows, the rings from their best man Scott and a "We do!" from the guests, there was one more moment to mark. Lisa is Jewish, and they wanted the breaking of the glass, one of the best loved moments in a Jewish wedding. I had set a glass wrapped in cloth at Alasdair's feet before the declarations. Some say it shows that what has just been done cannot be undone; others that even at our happiest we carry the people we have lost. For Lisa and Alasdair it meant both, and it was their way of bringing their two dads onto that terrace with them. Alasdair stamped, the glass went, and I called Mazel tov out over the loch.

Marrying at The Cruin yourself?

First, the paperwork. The Cruin has a G83 postcode out by Balloch, but its registration office is Helensburgh, in Argyll and Bute. Your marriage notice forms go to the Helensburgh registrar, and my name goes on them as your celebrant. Get them in early.

Second, you have two good rooms, and both look at the water. The Lochside Terrace is the one everybody pictures, with the view across to Inchmurrin and up to Ben Lomond, and the Ceremony Suite indoors has the loch filling its windows. The venue is family owned and exclusive to your wedding, so the team can set both and let you make the call on the morning. That is exactly how it ran for Lisa and Alasdair.

Third, outdoors you are competing with a big sky and the odd boat, so give your musician a wee bit of amplification. A harp carried beautifully across that terrace. And if you can, marry in late May: the rhododendrons along the shore were in full flower.

There is more on the setting in my The Cruin venue guide, and if you are marrying anywhere round the loch my Glasgow and Loch Lomond celebrant page is the place to start. If you are weighing up the terrace, read my guide to outdoor humanist weddings in Scotland, and if you want to bring a tradition from your own family into the day, as Lisa did with the glass, I have written about interfaith and multicultural humanist weddings too. A humanist wedding is legally binding anywhere in Scotland, lochside terrace included.