Real Wedding – Lisa & Lewis Tod – 4th February 2023

We hosted this gorgeous couples wedding back in February 2023. They made the byre so personal with all their highland cow personal touches and Lisa’s mum and Auntie making all the cushions on the couches. The couples have kindly shared stories about how they met and how they came to the decision to get married at Kinkell!

Firstly a little bit about you..

How did you two meet?

In September 2015, whilst out for our first night of freshers week at Heriot-Watt University.

Where did you get engaged?

We got engaged on Christmas Eve 2021 – our first Christmas in our first home.

Finding your venue and planning the wedding

What was it that first attracted you to Kinkell? Was there something that stood out when you knew it would be the perfect place for your special day?

We loved the idea of a barn wedding and St. Andrews holds many special memories for us both so it didn’t take us long to arrange our first venue viewing at Kinkell.

First of all, the view was amazing and then we headed inside…Despite the venue being bare and undecorated, we were instantly taken aback by how a place so large could feel so intimate with natural stone walls and beautiful lighting.

Claire was so welcoming and afterwards both her and Sophie were extremely helpful in answering all of our questions and offering advice. We booked our date in a matter of days and we never looked back!

Tell us a little bit about planning your wedding. Where did you start?

With a spreadsheet! We had 13 months between our first viewing of Kinkell and our wedding date, which was still plenty of time to do everything whilst maintaining lots of excitement along the way.

We then slowly but surely started booking suppliers and spent time scouring through Instagram and Pinterest taking screenshots of the different ideas we liked along the way.

How did you decide on a colour theme or style?

We decided to keep it really natural, so mainly green and white. We already loved the simplicity and innate charm of Kinkell, so it really didn’t need much to make it ‘pop’.

Where did you find your suppliers?

We picked a few suppliers based on recommendations from family and friends, but in the main we definitely relied on the recommended suppliers section of Kinkell’s website. It also really helped being able to meet a few in person at an open weekend not long after we booked.

Is there anything you wish someone had told you about before planning a barn wedding?

That it’s not as stressful as it’s sometimes made out to be and in actual fact you’ll have so much fun! It’s easy to forget that your suppliers do this day in and day out, so you can trust them to know exactly what they are doing.

Was there anything that was really important to you both to have?

It was really important that we had lots of personal touches throughout our wedding day, so we wrote our own vows and named our tables after places we love to visit in St. Andrews. We also made the most of our creative family and friends who helped to make our invitations, page boys tartan shorts and lots of finishing touches from place settings and signs to personalised cushions and blankets.

As we were having a February wedding it was unlikely that our guests would spend much time outside, so we really wanted a venue that had lots of different areas for our guests to spend the day, which was another reason we loved Kinkell.

The Big Day!

Tell us about your wedding day, what are your highlights and favourite memories?

We absolutely loved having all of our friends and family together in one special place. There are so many other highlights…our humanist Cammy brought our story to life perfectly, our guests spamming Alex Graham Piano with song requests and dancing the night away to The Riffreshers. Oh and we can’t not mention Lewis running through a cow field to catch the runaway veil (perfectly captured by our photographer and videographers!).

We had the best day from beginning to end and it feels amazing to look back and know that we wouldn’t change a thing! The team at Kinkell worked with our suppliers to ensure that our day ran perfectly, so we didn’t need to worry about a thing.

Have you any advice for other couples that are planning their wedding?

One piece of advice that we found helpful was if you see something and you like it then go for it as it’s so easy to become overwhelmed with all the options that are available to you.

How is married life treating you?

We’re not sure what to do with all this free time now the planning is over! Lisa is still coming to terms with the missing letter in her new surname, whilst Lewis is waiting on the puppy he was promised if we got engaged.

We had an amazing mini-moon and an incredible honeymoon a couple of months later – we definitely recommend eeking the celebrations out for as long as you can!

We’re now firmly settled into married life and loving every minute! We’re so grateful to now have Kinkell as a place that means so much to us and somewhere we look forward to visiting on a regular basis in the years to come.

Supplier Shout Out

Catering and Tables: Gourlay Events

Bar: Event Bar St. Andrews

Lighting: i-light

Cake: Mrs Macs Bakery

Bouquets: Suzy Bloom

Venue flowers & ceremony room decor: Ambience Venue Styling

Signage: Go2Events

Humanist: Cameron Goodall, Fuze Ceremonies

Photographer: FD Young Photography

Videographer: The April Frames

Band: The Riffreshers