Emily and Boh's wedding at The Free Company, Balerno

Emily and Boh got married at The Free Company, a working organic farm in Balerno at the foot of the Pentland Hills, about twenty five minutes west of the centre of Edinburgh. It’s a farm and a restaurant first, Michelin Guide listed with a Green Star for how they grow and rear everything, and it works as a wedding venue because the whole place already runs on that. Small, calm, unhurried. Which was exactly the day Emily and Boh were after.

You are essentially in Edinburgh. Your guests stay in the city, spend the day out in what feels like the middle of nowhere, then get a taxi back to a hotel in town. No coach hire. No shuttle spreadsheet. No village with one B&B in it.

And then you turn up the long driveway and the city may as well not exist. Fields, the Pentlands sitting behind everything, and a smell of log fires and eucalyptus that I’ve never got anywhere else. Something about the approach makes everyone drop a gear before they’ve even parked.

A Chinese tea ceremony in the bar

Before anything else happened, Emily and Boh and both their families had a traditional Chinese tea ceremony in a cosy little room inside the bar.

It mattered enormously to both of them and to their families, and you could feel that in the room. It’s a small space, and it was full, and the best thing I can do in that situation is stay out of the way and let it happen.

Quiet moments like that are the ones I want most. Nobody was arranged. Nobody was asked to hold a cup up and do it again.

An outdoor ceremony in the courtyard, rain or not

They got married outside in the courtyard, under the canopy.

That canopy is the thing I’d tell any couple looking at this venue. You can commit to an outdoor ceremony at The Free Company without spending the fortnight beforehand refreshing the forecast. It’s covered. If it rains, you get married outside anyway.

Their ceremony was led by a humanist celebrant, so it was written around them rather than read off a page. They drank from a quaich and had a handfasting. Chinese heritage in the morning, Scottish traditions from the country they live in an hour later, both of them theirs.

Small confetti throw in the courtyard afterwards, then straight back to standing about talking. No rush to anything.

You don’t need to leave the farm for photos

At The Free Company you do not need to go anywhere for photos.

We had a wander round the grounds and that was the entire plan. The polytunnel, empty of tomatoes this time with everything still coming up. Then along the lanes between the flowers and the vegetable beds, with Emily and Boh dancing about and laughing at each other while I hung back a few steps.

None of it is set dressing. Everything growing on that farm is growing because it’s going onto a plate inside The Free Company, and you can feel the difference.

And we were never more than a couple of minutes from their guests. No drive to a viewpoint, no forty five minutes spent away from your own wedding while everybody else has a drink.

Dinner in the hayloft

Dinner is usually in the barn at The Free Company, but Emily and Boh’s wedding was small enough that they ate in the hayloft instead. Up in the roof, vaulted ceiling, everyone in close around one table. Not a room most couples get to use.

The food at The Free Company is the best wedding food I have ever tasted and it isn’t close. It comes off the farm you’ve just spent an hour walking around, which is not a line, it’s the actual supply chain.

The log pile, and the long run

While everyone was eating, I went off scouting. I always do.

Most wedding venues have their spots. The wall, the tree, the staircase, and if you book that venue you will stand exactly where the last two hundred couples stood. The Free Company doesn’t really have those, because the farm changes through the year. But I go looking at venues I’ve been to a dozen times as well, because it makes your photos yours.

So, round the back, a log pile. Enormous felled trunks stacked up, cut ends, deep greens and browns, and I fucking love a log pile. That was already the shot.

Then I saw someone had spray painted for the long run across the timber. The farm runs a trail running series called Trail Sessions, and the paint was left over from one of those. I don’t think I’ve ever walked back into a wedding faster. Emily and Boh came out after dinner, stood in front of it, and there it was. Two people who’d just committed to each other, next to a wall of logs telling them they’re in it for the long run.

That log pile will be gone. Nobody built it for a wedding, nobody hired it in, it’s not a six foot LOVE sign with bulbs in it that’s been in four hundred other people’s photos. It was a real thing that happened to be there on their day.

You can’t plan that. You can only go looking.

Emily and Boh, thank you. Brilliant day.