“We can’t believe it has almost been 3 months”, said Philippa when she sent me these stunning photos by Gary Bonar from their ceremony at Edinburgh’s very popular Five Star Virgin Hotel

We defrosted some wedding cake on our 2 month anniversary and watched the video sent over from Craig. It was a lovely watch and listening to the ceremony in full was fantastic. 

Looking back at the day, it was everything we could have asked for.

Callum and Philippa came to see me almost exactly a year before their big day, and they wholeheartedly embraced the LoveWork process.

As they said when they sent it to me, “We found this such a valuable exercise, and it really cemented how we are on the same page. It was really interesting to see how over the last few years, the same events had stuck with us.”

Self-confessed ‘Volvo Geeks‘, Philippa recognised Callum’s C30 from a glimpse of it in his photo, and it wasn’t long before they were going trampolining together!

They survived long-distance, the pandemic, personal injury and the loss of loved ones before getting their pampered pooch, Winston the Westie, who’s been the centre of their lives ever since.

The Northumberland coast is their happy place, so it became the best location for the proposal in November 2024, when on a wet and windy walk, Callum pulled a ring out of his pocket, rather than the expected pot of blueberries for Winston.

Philippa was completely shocked!

On the day, they were surrounded by close family and friends.

Philippa’s sister Sophie read ‘The Giraffe and the Monkey’ by Daniel Thompson, while Luke very appropriately chose ‘What I Learned about Love, I Learned from my Dog’.

Their vows were directly inspired by what they’d shared in their LoveWork…

and Sophie and Dan gave them their rings.

before I pronounced them married – and got out of the way!

Long before we all arrived at the Virgin, I knew Callum and Philippa would have a wonderful day simply because of the care and attention they brought to the whole process of creating their ceremony.

As they said, “We felt blessed to have our close family and friends with us to celebrate and also to have picked some of the best suppliers we could have ever imagined, yourself being one of them.“

As we probably discussed when we first met you, we fell into a humanist wedding by chance and it’s one of the best things we did. 

The whole process of meeting yourself and working with you through the love work and curating the ceremony was fantastic and I truly believe every couple should do that sort of exercise before getting married. 

We had so much positive feedback from our guests about how personal the wedding felt, something which most of them had not experienced before at other weddings they had attended. We both couldn’t imagine our wedding any other way!

Nearly 3 months on and it feels amazing to be husband and wife. Our relationship feels stronger than ever and being married has just solidified the bond we already had. 

We have booked to go to Rome in September for our honeymoon so busy planning for that and trying to practice a little Italian too!

Good luck with that, Philippa and Callum – or as they say in Italian – “Buona fortuna!” Here’s a little phrase for you to translate as practice… Grazie mille per le tue gentili parole, Philippa & Callum. Vi auguro una splendida luna di miele a Roma!

Thank you again for being such a joy to work with.

And of course big thanks to Jo and all her team at the Virgin Hotel and particularly to Gary Bonar for these fabulous photographs!