Penelope prepares to celebrate 100th wedding
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
But she quickly explained: “I haven’t been married 99 times, it’s just that over the past few years I’ve been the humanist celebrant at 99 marriage ceremonies, and carry out my 100th at Dunrobin Castle tomorrow.”
Coincidentally, the Golspie venue is the same as her first wedding on 18th July 2009, when she conducted the marriage of Jessica Carlisle and Nicholas Janson (Lord Strathnaver’s nephew).
However, she confided: “This was my first wedding booking – but at very short notice I was asked to do another wedding the morning of the same day, so technically it was my second wedding.
“On the morning of 18th July 2009, I married a crofting couple on their croft near Bonar Bridge and in the afternoon I married a direct descendant of the infamous ‘Clearances’ Duke of Sutherland.
“When I told Nick’s fiance Jessica all this, she was very sweetly concerned about my feelings and said she’d quite understand if I didn’t want to be the celebrant for the wedding of a descendant of the Duke of Sutherland.
“I replied that she shouldn’t worry, it was all history now, but after the wedding I’d have to take Nick outside and shoot him!”
The couple she’ll marry tomorrow are Stuart Bremner and Vicky Macdonald, both from Thurso, where Penelope now lives.
Among other weddings at Dunrobin Castle which she remembers is that between Canadians Chris Lafferty and Gaeleen MacPherson.
“It’s a Scottish diaspora story – some Canadian and American couples want to get married in the area of Scotland that their forbears come from. In Gaeleen’s first email to me, she told me her father Murdo is from Helmsdale.”
Gaeleen’s e-mail continued: “At the tender age of 21 he came to Canada with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been to Scotland once, when I was five-years-old, to visit my Granda.
“Ever since, from my one and only visit to Dunrobin Castle on that trip, I always knew that I wanted to be married there.
“My Granda passed away in 1996 and, with my father being an only child and my Granny already passed on, I think my dad felt he never had a reason to return home after that. So, our wedding is going to be a welcome home of sorts for my dad, a happy reason to return.”
Penelope decided to train as a celebrant for the Humanist Society Scotland soon after her 19-year-old daughter Thea Sharp, died in a car accident in 2006.
She told the NT: “We found the humanist funeral very comforting and I knew straightaway that I wanted to be a funeral celebrant but I was doubtful about weddings. I was never the kind of girl who dreamed about my big day.”
But she soon realised that she loved being a marriage celebrant from the first moment of her first wedding and relishes every aspect of her role.
“Listening to the couple’s ideas, helping them choose symbolic gestures, readings and the wording of their vows, creating the script, and making sure everyone feels confident about what’s happening on the day – these are all part of the joy. And then there’s the ceremony itself.”
It means a lot to her that couples without religious faith can have a meaningful wedding anywhere in Scotland and they don’t have to worry that anything in the ceremony will offend or upset religious members of their families.
Demand for humanist weddings has increased and 13 of Penelope’s 36 weddings this year have been in Sutherland, many of them outdoors.
She’s married couples in their own homes, and in Glencanisp, Clashnessie, Culkein, Leckmelm Arboretum, Ardvreck Castle and Smoo Cave, as well as Dunrobin Castle. Venues in previous years included Loch Fleet and hotels in Helmsdale, Dornoch, Kylesku and Tongue. Penelope’s looking forward to a wedding in Loch Eriboll church in 2013.
“Numbers of guests vary from two to 200. Some couples don’t tell anyone they’re getting married until afterwards, at a celebratory party. Others bring everyone they can persuade to travel to a remote spot that’s special to them and sometimes this involves travelling hundreds of miles.”
But Dunrobin Castle remains a firm favourite with Penelope.
“It’s like a fairytale castle,” she said. “Inside, everything’s beautiful and it’s elegant without being too grand.”
Facts about humanist weddings
?
Humanist marriages became legal in Scotland in 2005 and Scotland is one of only six countries where humanist celebrants are authorised to conduct marriages.
The number of humanist marriages in Scotland has grown from 100 in 2005 to 2,846 in 2011.
Humanist celebrants, like ministers of religion, are authorised to conduct marriages anywhere in Scotland – even out at sea, as long as it’s within the 12-mile limit.
