What’s your definition of a romantic location? At one point I might have gone for the obvious one – palm trees swaying over a deserted tropical beach, but from now on, it’s the roofless ruin of Melrose Abbey, in the white light of a freezing cold Saturday afternoon in February. Only a true romantic would have chosen it, and in Vicky and Andy, I had two.

Most of their guests were sensibly wrapped up in tweeds, and I was wearing my goose-down filled McMurdo Parka – until I looked up and saw Vicky approaching wearing only her wedding gown, like someone out of a Charlotte Bronte novel. I dumped the jacket and just shivered like everyone else.

Andy and Vicky are both writers, so every word had been thoroughly weighed, assayed, cut and polished until it shone like a sapphire. One of the nicest touches was that they decided to combine their wedding with a short Naming and Welcoming Ceremony for their son, Louis and they and their guide parents, George, Pru, John and Angus all read him a short passage from Thomas A Clark’s poem, Twenty Blessings. You can hear the poet reading it here.