Louise & Ryan’s Humanist Wedding at Seton Collegiate Church

One of the joys of conducting weddings is meeting guests I already know because I married them so I was particularly looking forward to Amanda and Stephen’s wedding last weekend because I knew that it was Louise and Ryan’s ceremony that had inspired them to ask me to be their celebrant.

What I wasn’t expecting though, was to see Louise on her own. My mind raced; it was only two years ago – what can have happened?

The answer of course is ‘parenthood’! As Louise said, “Since becoming Mr & Mrs Hook we have been rather busy! Our family has expanded and we now have 2 kids – we welcomed our daughter, Romy, in February 2020 and our son Owen just last month. We are absolutely loving family life and being parents.”

So, Ryan was missing out on a great party to be at home with Owen and Romy. I was deeply impressed!

It’s all a bit of a contrast to how life was when he and Louise first met.

As Louise wrote in her version of their story, “Ryan and I ‘met’ at the New Year’s Day meeting at Musselburgh Racecourse in 2016. When I say ‘met’ I mean, Ryan saw me from afar and sent me an unexpected Facebook message at 3am the following morning… Initial reaction – screenshot to my best friend Lauren Meharry and a few emoji laughing faces ‘3am, really?’ However, after giving me one of his best chat up lines – ‘do you know I was privately educated at Loretto school hen?’ – we enjoyed our first date a week later and from then on, we very quickly fell in love.”

As she said when she sent me these great photos by Derek Christie, “It was great to see you on Saturday at The Ferguson wedding – so nice we can now all celebrate together again and enjoy a good wedding! It was such a fantastic day and the ceremony brought back so many wonderful memories of my own wedding. 
It’s crazy to think 2 years have passed since we got married! We will forever be grateful we got to have the wedding of our dreams and celebrate with all our friends and family – something that the pandemic has sadly taken away from a lot of brides and grooms.

Our wedding ceremony was just perfect. It was exactly as we wanted it – we got to tell the story of us as a couple and why we were getting married in our own words. We were also able to express how important our family and friends are to us. We wanted the ceremony to be lighthearted and sentimental and you delivered it absolutely perfectly!  

A lot of our guests had never been to a humanist ceremony before and commented on how much they enjoyed the uniqueness of it as it was so personal and conveyed ‘us’.

We cannot thank you enough for helping to make our wedding such an incredible day and for pronouncing us man and wife!


Here are some photos of our wedding day.. captured by the incredible Derek Christie!

Here’s my happy snap of the man himself at Arniston House…

And here’s one of Louise at dinner that evening; looking absolutely gorgeous!

Derek’s a great guy and we work together a lot. I know that many couples contact me on his recommendation, and although it’s very rare for anyone to choose a celebrant before they choose their photographer, I hope one of these days to be able to return the compliment! In the meantime, you can see why his couples love him so much here.

My thanks go to him of course, but most of all to Louise and Ryan; thank you for your kind words, thank you for sharing your story, and thank you too for introducing me to Stephen and Amanda! I wonder whose wedding we’ll meet at next time?

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