It was in August of last year that Irene got in touch, all the way from the northwest of the USA. She and Mike had already spoken to their photographer, Sean Bell, so I was very pleased he’d recommended me for their wildly romantic elopement ceremony on the beach at Seacliff in early December.

Yes; you read that right. Early December, on a beach in East Lothian.

I love romantics – especially romantics with a core of steel – and the courage to brave the elements, like Mike and Irene!

As she said, “We are experiencing quite a spot of rain here in Oregon, so we are prepped for Scotland. I am a bit concerned that I might freeze in the elements, but I suppose we shall sort that out haha!”

Well, it was freezing.

I knew what we were in for, so I was appropriately dressed.

Some years ago, a friend gave me an old leather coat which was falling apart under its own weight, so I took it down to the wonderful people at Aero Leathers in Galashiels, and that’s when I discovered it wasn’t just any old leather coat.

Mine had been made in 1941 for the Swedish Navy, so it was designed to be worn in literally Baltic conditions and it’s now good for another 80 years of bad weather…

Elopements focus marriage on its most important elements. They can be legal ceremonies, but most people who choose to elope here in Scotland take care of the legalities back home, and that’s what Mike and Irene did.

I opened the ceremony with a reading of the beautiful and passionate Love sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda, and then I cleared shot to give Irene and Mike the stage to make their promises to one another.

Perhaps because it was so bitterly cold, it was intensely emotional.

Before Sean brought them down to Seacliff, he shot a session in Edinburgh as they got ready in their apartment and wandered past the ancient wall that was built in the aftermath of the devastating Battle of Flodden in 1513, to defend against an English invasion that thankfully never materialised.

Sean has a great eye. A ‘UK Top 50 Wedding Photographer’, he’s won a lot of awards, most recently one given by his peers – Best Europe Wedding Photographer (Way Up North). He loves the wild places and it was he who chose the location for Mike and Irene.

Seacliff is one of East Lothian’s less well-known beaches. It still has a working harbour, carved out of the rocks, from which a small lobster boat sets sail every day, and it’s a ‘private beach’ too, which means you can only access it by paying a small fee to negotiate the barrier that protects the narrow track down to the shore. Every year, many people think it worth paying it to get there and – even in the depths of a Scottish winter – I think you can see why.

It offers unique views – in one direction, to the world’s largest single-rock gannet colony, the Bass Rock, and in the other – by turning your head slightly to the left – to the 14th century Tantallon Castle. They’re both wreathed in history.

The Bass served as a prison during the Napoleonic Wars, and it was famously featured in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel “Catriona”. The Stevenson family connection continued, because it was his family of lighthouse engineers who built the lighthouse there too.

It’s been important to another family as well. The Bass was bought in 1707 by a local landowner, Hew Dalrymple, but his eponymous descendant has just passed it into the ownership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds because they’re better able to look after it.

Now a ruin, Tantallon’s history predates its construction. Believed by some to have been the original site of Camelot in the Arthurian Legends, it’s been through the wars – literally – having been besieged by successive armies, not all of them English, but you can read all about that here and here.

Seacliff offers a magical backdrop at any time of year, but in the cold months, with the sea breaking over the rocks in the background, it wasn’t just a romantic location; it was “sublime”

I’m not going to share Irene and Mike’s promises because they were very personal.

When they had spoken them to one another, I came back and helped them with a quaich ceremony, and a handfasting.

I’ve written about both of those symbolic gestures at some length elsewhere on this blog, and I love the way they made both of them their own.

I was very pleased to get this message from Mike who said, “We had an amazing time. Still talk about it like it just happened yesterday. We tell everybody about it. Life is very good. We are very happy. I truly found my partner in crime.”

Getting married on the coast like that was amazing experience that I never thought I would ever have.

You and Sean made it special for us and the pictures are amazing. I didn’t think it was possible to make me look that good in a photo!”

Every frame an absolute belter, as we say in Scotland!

It was worth braving the elements to get images like these.

I confidently expect to see many of them in this year’s Wedding Photographer of the Year.

Thank you so much, Irene and Mike, for choosing me to conduct your elopement ceremony.

Thank you for having the vision to choose Sean Bell as your photographer and thank you for allowing me to share this story.

I certainly hope it will inspire other couples to have the courage to pursue the sublime – and if it does, I already have“the right clothing”, as Billy Connolly used to say…