Bagpipes and Wedding Bells: Tying the Knot in St Andrews

Summers in St Andrews consist of the sounds of bagpipes and wedding bells. The atmosphere is bright, easy, with laughter and chatter of wedding guests in black tie echoing down North Street. St Andrews is a popular spot for past students, locals, and repeat tourists to come together to celebrate getting married. 

Richard Barton was married in St Andrews in 2002. He first came to the town as a teenager. “We stayed at one of the university halls, and we came for two or three years on the trot,” he said. “It soon became my favourite place.” When he and Carolyn Barton started visiting on holidays, “it became her favourite place, [too]. So we just said, let’s get married in St Andrews. And that was it, really.”

The couple wanted a small wedding. “About twenty or so family members came up,” Barton recalled. The ceremony was held in August at the civil registry office on South Street, followed by a reception at the Rufflets Hotel. “I think it was raining part of the day. It rained, and then it cleared up, but we had a really nice day,” Barton said. “Everyone enjoyed it. It all went to plan.”

Neither studied at St Andrews but discovered a deep love for the place. Barton emphasised “you’ve got to have a really strong connection to the town” to get married here. “I’d learned to play golf at the time, so that was a big part of it,” he said. “Coming to the home of golf and playing the courses. But just the town itself — the medieval buildings, the beaches, the streets. Everything really [...] We just loved it.”

“I’ve been to St Andrews more than 50 times since that first trip in 1980,” Barton said. “I’ve got so many memories of the place now. I remember getting married. I’ve got memories of bringing the girls up on holidays as they were growing up. I’ve got my golfing memories […] I’ve had a couple of trips up with friends.”  

The couple’s connection to St Andrews continued when their daughter attended the University. “It was really nice when Laura ended up at uni after our family history,” he said. “It’s hard not to like St Andrews, isn’t it? It’s the place, really.”

Charlotte Davies has captured many weddings like the Bartons’. A former St Andrews student, Davies now works as a wedding photographer. At university, she joined a creative student group called Lightbox. “I was really keen, ready to go, did a couple of union events, and then COVID obviously wiped us out,” she explained. “A lot of the jobs that resurfaced post-COVID came to me. I just kept learning, kept loving it, and here we are.”

Davies photographs dozens of weddings each year, having done around 35 weddings since April this year. “It’s maybe been a 70-30 split this year,” she said. “70% students or alumni, and 30% locals.” 

For both Barton and Davies, the scale of a wedding is meaningful. Barton said he and Carolyn both wanted a “low-key” wedding. “We didn't want a massive event with 150 people coming and a six-course meal and champagne every hour of the day. We just planned a fairly quiet, small wedding.”

Davies has seen both — “people who have the money are going bigger,” while others are leaning towards “a small, serious, legal bit and then later down the line, a party.”

“There’s something to be said for those smaller, low-key ceremonies,” Davies said. If you “go all out and invite a hundred, 150 people” that you don’t really know “to huge venues [...], it ends up being a [...] a performance all day,” she explained. “It just depends on people’s personalities. Couples have to do what feels right for them.”

As a photographer, Davies has observed unexpected and heartwarming moments. She recalls one wedding where the groom’s best man, his brother, purposely set an alarm on his phone to ring midway through the ceremony. What seemed accidental, silly, or even rude was deliberately planned to divert attention from the nervous groom. “I only found out afterwards,” Davies said, “but it did get a laugh out of the crowd and genuinely did settle the groom's nerves, so that was really sweet.”

Davies’ website tends to attract graduates coming back to marry in the town where they met. “I get a lot of students coming back with all their pals from uni,” she said. “It’s like the first time everyone’s been together in five, ten, twenty years. That’s really cool to experience.”

For Davies, the proximity that defines St Andrews is what sets it apart. “After these four brief years, you'll likely never have your friends living on the same street as you, or two minutes down the road. You won't all end up at the pub quiz on Sunday nights, you won't be able to just roll up to the library and [see] at least three people you know [...] in their usual spot ready for a chat or a joint study session.”

“I shoot a lot of alumni weddings here, and it means you get to recreate that proximity,” Davies said. “Often people choose to stay for an extra three days and recreate their favourite memories. They'll go back to East Sands, they'll ceilidh at Forgan’s, grab a[n icecream from] Jannettas, they'll walk the Pier.”  

Like Barton, Davies finds couples get married in St Andrews because of their meaningful connection to places in the town. “For alumni, they go back to where they stayed in town, if they had a flat in town, which is cute,” she explained. “A lot of the time, it's a roommate thing. They'll both live there or [have] met when they flat shared, which is quite sweet.”

“The weddings I've shot in Edinburgh and Glasgow just don't have that same re-connection or reunion, even if in essence they are getting together with a lot of old friends,” she explained. “It's the proximity and the memories you make in these specific locations that you have the ability to relive, however many years later.”

Illustration by Alice O'Sullivan