The wedding of iona's cousin ewen and his new wife annie was the main reason we came to scotland, and so when the day arrived, we were, safe to say, reasonably excited (and not only because of the scottish dancing we had been promised). we (being the main family and me - the self-proclaimed honorary member of the main family) drove up to aviemore in the somewhat miraculous sun and proceeded to spend the next 2 hours wandering around the hotel and getting ready. this was a fairly big occasion, considering i'm pretty sure it was the first time on this trip that both iona and i have looked clean and nice. quelle miracle.
the wedding itself was really really fun. neither of us have what you would call vast experience with weddings (i think we can count both of our appearances at these occasiona on one hand) but we had a lovely time. the bride looked gorgeous and everyone was having a good night! we also quickly decided that scottish weddings are much better than non-scottish ones - lots of people in kilts (SO much better than suits) and a reasonable amount of people falling over in the highly amusing and apparently highly dangerous highland dancing. we had a pretty good go at most of the dances, iona even attempting one which involved the guys spinning the girls in some sort of flying manouvre. i spent a large part of that one congratulating myself on sitting it out, but apparently it was really good. another one we tried was called the 51st, and it rendered both of us so confused we ended up being dragged around by the people on either side so that we didn't do too much of the wrong thing!
the day after the wedding we jetted off (in the car) to the town of st andrews, where iona's dad went to university. it was a really cute place, full of memories for iona's dad and full of little cafes and gift shop type places for the rest of us! we spent the afternoon playing golf on the course where golf was apparently invented (we actually played putt putt, but it was still at the same course so we felt pretty cool).
the next day we went to a strawberry farm to pick strawberries which was really good fun! we in fact got so carried away that we managed to leave with almost 4 kilos of strawberries - and that's not even including the ones we ate along the way! we then left the st andrews area and started to make our way back to ardgour, stopping to see stirling castle, which was really cool, but unfortunately located in a town which we concluded to be full of 'gross people, obese people, skinheads and tourists'. awesome.
we spent the next couple of days chilling with iona's more extended family again, and then iona, laura and i drove down to the islands of mull and (somewhat more importantly) iona. we rampaged around there for a couple of days, mavelling at the cuteness of tobermory's rainbow buildings and charging around the isle of iona with 2 main objectives:
1 to get as many photos of iona with iona signs as humanly possible and,
2 to purchase as much iona related merchandise as iona could lay her hands on!
now we're back in ardgour again for a couple of days, before we leave sunny scotland and head for ireland with iona's parents. but as we haven't done that yet, that story will have to wait for next time...
much love,
vivienne (and iona)
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