The Glorious Prestonfield House in December

On By @humanistbrianIn Prestonfield House Hotel

I was asked to conduct three intimate marriages at the Prestonfield House Hotel in November and December and I must admit I think it is the perfect winter venue for a small wedding. The largest of the weddings had 12 guests and the smallest 6 and they were all held in the beautiful Leather Room with its wood and leather panelling and roaring log fire. I cannot praise the staff at the Prestonfield enough. The service is faultless from the moment you arrive and nothing is too much trouble (see my Blog about moving the ceremony outdoors).

Alan and Joan got married on the 25th November. Alan is an artist and the two of them work at the College of Art so the wedding had some style to it, to say the least. I always suggest that you should include some music as your guests wait for the arrival of the bride and Joan chose the soundtrack to the film Emilie and then entered to Song of the Siren by the Czars, what else.
They also selected a reading that was unfamiliar to me. It is from “Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules.
The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s.
To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endless changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing.
Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back – it does not matter which.

Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. 

By the time Sam and Jemma got married on the 21st December the Christmas decorations were of course on display and the Leather Room became even more enchanting. It always wonderful to bump into old friends and amongst their guests were Graeme and Jo (Sam’s sister) whom I married on the 25th November 2011 with their little one.

As revenge for the reading she made her do at her wedding Gemma asked Jo to read I Love You:

I love you
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple.
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good.
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.

Ben, the ultimate ring bearer!

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