Getting married in Scotland is an expensive lottery. First of all weddings aren’t cheap. Whether it be a simple registry office wedding which may cost you in the region of £400 to £1000 or more, or a wedding at a 5 star venue which can easily cost in excess of £15000. Part of the lottery of getting married is the weather. Of course everyone hopes for perfect wedding on their big day and fortunately something in the region of 80% of the weddings I’ve done have had really nice or fantastic weather.

You might say “so what?” but this is Scotland which is renowned for it’s cold wet windy weather. Take the summer of 2012, it was mostly cold and often wet but the summer of 2013 has been really awesome. For several months we’ve had 20 degree plus weather, bright sunshine and clear skies. It’s been awesome.

So to make the point about the weather, of course I hope the weather is perfect for all the weddings I do but none more so than for today’s wedding which I photographed at Orocco Pier and for which the weather was absolutely perfect. For those not familiar Orocco Pier, it’s a restaurant and hotel that sits on South Queensferry high street. I really like South Queensferry. It’s a great little area to walk around, there’s the seaside, lots of events taking place and I really like Orocco Pier. Liv and I have visited a few times for breakfast and lunch and we’ve always like the atmosphere of the place and really love the setting.

So around three months ago I did a pre wedding shoot at Lauriston Castle and Dean Village with Sarah and Leigh. I really love doing pre shoots with couples and we decided between us that we would do a pre shoot for this wedding. I thought the shoot turned out great and you can see it here.

On the day of the wedding the organisers at Orocco Pier had setup two settings for getting married. One was for the wedding to take place on the terrace overlooking the Forth of Firth and the rail bridge while the contingency was to get married inside. Don’t get me wrong, the setting inside looked nice but the setting outside was really gorgeous. If not for the Forth rail bridge one could be mistaken for a wedding taking place in the south of France or the mediterranean.

For this wedding Sarah and Leigh only booked me from the ceremony until the first dance. While it’s nice doing preparation shots it does make the day quite long so even though I was at Sarah and Leigh’s wedding for just around 8-9 hours it felt a lot shorter. Part of that was Sarah and Leigh themselves. They are an absolutely awesome couple and were so nice to work with.

For the wedding itself, I loved absolutely everything about it. From the festival passes to the wellies with flowers in them to the his and hers wellies, everything was fantastic. Because of everything about this weather I’ve split the photos into two blogs. I normally include about 20-30 photos in a blog post for a wedding but I really have to share a whole lot more.