A Humanist Elopement at the Isle of Skye, Scotland

Katelyn and Katie had a dreamy, intimate wedding in the Isle of Skye, Scotland – a humanist ceremony with a handfasting ceremony to seal the union.

We met while working virtually for a large telecom company in 2018. We were both assigned to a special project and ended up being paired together as our names were similar. It is a modern day love story for the ages. We immediately hit it off and began chatting on and off at work.

After Katie finally worked up the courage to give me her number, we went on our first coffee date. That date then turned into dinner, then a trip to the arcade all in one evening.

About two months into dating, during a weekend trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we confessed that we both knew we wanted a future together. It was around this time that we began discussing what we wanted our wedding to look like.

Neither of us wanted a big wedding, and our love of traveling made us want to make this moment an epic adventure. While researching we found a lesbian couple who had eloped and taken phenomenal photos hiking around the Scottish Highlands. We knew this had to be our dream adventure wedding.

This is how we came to fall in love with Isle of Skye.

THE ENGAGEMENT

We moved in together after a little over a year of dating. At some point we started hiding these fake flower petals in each other’s things, starting a prank war of sorts. Innocuous enough, but they were in every corner of our home. One day, I decided to put one petal in every pair of socks in Katie’s drawer. It was then, in this fateful moment, that I accidentally found my soon to be engagement ring. After a great deal of panic, I carefully tried to rearrange everything back in it’s place. I also adopted the composure of an “innocent” person. She immediately knew. I denied this fervently until after we were officially engaged.

A few months went by, and one day (November 11th, 2019) as we were discussing life and our future goals together, Katie pulled out the ring and proposed there in our living room. She said she had a plan, but she absolutely could not wait any longer. In February, I surprised her with a proposal at sunset on the pedestrian bridge in Nashville. Both were equally perfect and made perfect sense for us.

PLANNING THE WEDDING

In our post-engagement euphoria, we momentarily thought would plan a big grandiose affair. However, we quickly realized the only plan that made us happy was eloping on the Isle of Skye. So we invited our closest family and friends, and planned an adventure wedding in Scotland for September of 2020. You know how that story went.

After pushing our wedding several times, we landed on June of 2021. As the time drew closer, we knew this was not going to be possible. In March of 2021, we pulled the plug on our elopement ceremony. We were heartbroken. Nevertheless, the only thing that truly mattered was being married to each other. We planned a small wedding in Nashville with our closest family and friends, and had a wonderful time celebrating with them. It was a perfect day. We have beautiful photographs from the wonderful Olivia Plath. This remains one of the best days of our lives.

Despite all of this, we refused to cancel our photographers in Scotland, Jo and Liam. We were determined that we would have our dream

THE ENGAGEMENT

PLANNING THE WEDDING

Despite all of this, we refused to cancel our photographers in Scotland, Jo and Liam. We were determined that we would have our dream celebration.

THE WEDDING DAY

Finally, for our first wedding anniversary, in June of 2022, we travelled to Scotland to take our anniversary photos. After 24 hours of cancelled flights, a 9 hour layover in London-Heathrow, and a 3 hour bus journey from Inverness, we made it to Skye. Our relationship also withstood the test of us learning to drive on the opposite side of the car and road.

On our first night, we drove around to sight see as the sun is out until 11pm in the summer months. We drove to the Quiraing. It was here that we stumbled upon an elopement. After what I thought was subtle lurking (Katie disagrees), we confirmed that the ceremony was being performed by none other than Rona Burstow, the humanist we had originally chosen for our big day. Not only did we meet her in person, by complete happenstance, for the first time ever, but she graciously offered to come during our photoshoot and perform a handfasting for us. Our darling photographers, Jo and Liam, even found us tartan scarves (gifted to us by Jo’s stepmum) to use as our handfasting cords. It was at this moment that we established our elopement catch phrase was to be, “kismet bitches.”

On the day, Jo and Liam came to our cottage to photograph us getting ready and is writing our vows. They then drove us to the Quiraing where we did some light hiking in our wedding garb. Rona performed our handfasting ceremony on a precipice of the Trotternish ridge, just as we had always dreamed. It was filled with happy tears and a sense of finally accomplishing our long standing goal. It was then that we truly felt our marriage was solidified.

After this, while listening to Kate Bush’s, “Wuthering Heights,” we went to take sunset photos in the Fairy Glen. The light was absolutely stunning as it was an uncharacteristically dry and warm day on Skye. Katie and I feel as though we had the best of both worlds and it was worth the wait. We also gained a few friends as a result. This includes several of Skye’s resident sheep. You could say, it was all Kismet.