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Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, we have booked a ceilidh band. After some deliberation we settled on Iron Broo, who seem to have great reviews from everyone we spoke to.

We also went to see them (very briefly) the other day and I couldn’t believe the speed of the accordian players fingers, turns out his fingers aren’t his only good attribute, he’s also a really nice guy called Charlie Abel.

Check out their website here, you can listen to some of their recordings.

We are VERY grateful that those of you who we have spoken to from far away are planning to come up and celebrate our Wedding Day with us in September and hopefully you have found some of the information on travel and location useful in the news section of this website (If you haven’t seen them click here and scroll down through the information pages)

Lots of you have been asking about Accomadation and hopefully we can give you some useful info on that here. Although numbers aren’t confirmed we expect a few of our friends who live in the surrounding areas to be able to accomadate some people coming up from Cornwall and further afield but these numbers will be very limited.

The Visit Scotland site might be useful to find all levels of accomadation, click here for the banchory site, but if you are coming for a shorter period and are looking for a cost effective way of staying very near to the wedding we think we may have come up with a good solution.

A local Golf Club (Inchmarlo Resort) has 2 and 3 Bedroomed Apartments which can take 4 and 6 peoples respectively, the 3 Bedroom apartments are £159 per night which works out at about £26.50 per person, with the 2 Bedroom apartments being £119, which works out at roughly the same per person. Click here for more info.

The apartments and villas at Inchmarlo Resort now have the prestigious 4-Star Award for Serviced Apartments from the Scottish Tourist Board. Our luxury apartments and villas are all fully serviced, which means that you have all the privacy of your own luxury accommodation in one of the most beautiful settings in Scotland, and we’ll take care of all the usual services you’d expect from 4-Star Award winning accommodation, like impeccable housekeeping, fresh linens on request, a welcome pack, luxurious fully equipped modern kitchen and living spaces with beautiful furnishings, and of course, TV and DVD player and wireless internet connection.

For more information about fees for Inchmarlo Resort Apartments and Villas, please contact Bruce Graham, General Manager, Sales and Marketing on 01330 826420 or email bruce@inchmarlo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

If you can think of a few people to share with this would be a great option. Apart from being fairly good value for money the apartments are fully serviced (like a hotel) and have a 4* rating which should make your stay all the more enjoyable. The other plus is that the apartments are very close to Banchory and Finzean which is where the wedding will be.

For thos on a tight budget, There are two Youth Hostels in the general area which are probably the cheapest options, but both a fair distance a way still, one in Braemar (in a lovely area in deeside) and one in Aberdeen (handy for Aberdeen - I stayed in this Hostel the first time I came to Aberdeen.

Here are a few other good options depending on your budget, as I mentioned in the travel info North East Scotland doesn’t have a brilliant public transport system and if you stay outside of the Banchory area, eg. Aberdeen you will probably have to rent a car unless you are willing to be dependent on the odd lift.

If anyone has any questions let me know, mail@liambyrnes.co.uk

Although a fairly short domestic flight, once you have travelled to a regional airport (Plymouth, Bristol Exeter or London) and waited in departure drinking overpriced coffee, flying to scotland will take you the best part of your day but you will undoubtedly feel alot more human upon arrival, and you can actually get some pretty good deals if you shop early (eg. NOW).

One thing with Flying to Scotland that I would advise is, because on the ground transport infrastructure is significantly better in the south of England it will be far less hassle to, for example travel to exeter and end up in Aberdeen than to fly from Plymouth/Newquay to Glasgow. Also, contrary to popular opinion, Scotland is quite spread out so unfortunately we won’t be able to arrange for you to be picked up from Glasgow or Edinburgh, but we will certainly be able to pick you up from Aberdeen airport.

As I said transport infrastructure here isn’t as good as in the south of England, there are essentially no trains apart for travelling between the cities, and rurally the buses are quite infrequent and the journeys long, if you’re flying up you may want to consider hiring a small car for a couple of days, you can normally get good weekend rates and it means you can make the most of scotland for the few days you’ll be up for and do some exploring or just to have the freedom to go into Aberdeen for some shopping.

Lastly, when shopping for flights, especially the budget carriers such as flybe and easyjet, the best prices are often on their own website, but just to cross check its worth searching through a multiple flight checker like travelsupermarket.com. Also keep an eye in the local papers as regional carriers such as airsouthwest often include promotional deals that are not available online.

As I see it here are your options - (I have taken almost all of these routes at one time or another, so if you need more info on any of them then let me know):

1. Exeter to Aberdeen - This is possibly the best option, which is why I listed it first. Flybe operates this route and currently tickets are about £50 return before taxes.
2. Exeter to Edinburgh/Glasgow - The other option is to fly into Edinburgh or Glasgow if the times suit you better or you want to extend your time in Scotland by taking in some sights before or after the wedding. Budget carrier Easyjet offers the best flight prices for this route.
3. Bristol to Aberdeen - Bristol to Aberdeen flights are known to be outrageously expensive but its worth checking if you think that Bristol would be a handy option for you. The route is operated by Eastern Airways.
4. Plymouth/Newquay to Glasgow - Flights operated by AirSouthWest, which you can often get some good deals if you get in early enough
5. London to Aberdeen - If you can get to London easily enough there are lots of options to get direct to Aberdeen, British Airways flys from heathrow and gatwick(for about £60 return if you get in early enough) and easyjet flys from Luton (again for around £60 return).

For many of you coming from ‘doon sooth’ (down south) it will be quite a long journey, so firstly THANKS, We can’t wait to see you and we’re honoured that you’re even considering making this effort.

Secondly, it is entirely do-able, I have done it within a weekend before (definately not to be recommended) I left work on Friday and the left Sunday after Church in Cornwall. If your driving, although it is a long way it is a fairly straight forward route,

• on the M5 after Exeter
• follow signs for Birmingham,
• then Manchester (almost exactly half way)
• past Preston (this is roughly where your first wind will end!)
• Through the lovely Lake District heading for Carlisle
• Stay on the M74 to Glasgow, then onto the M73 (routes to Stirling/Dunblane)
• Follows signs to Dundee then stay on the A90 all the way to Aberdeen

You can do the route and go across country in England and via Edinburgh, but I have found that to be a good bit longer.

Good Question, to be honest when we went to look at the venue we were 20 minuites late because we ended up taking a wrong turn and ending up in the highlands (the real ones, where there are 6ft snow poles marking off the road!). So I thought Id include a map below, or you can go to Google Maps and type in Finzean, Scotland.

We Promised we would try and keep you up to date, and although the invitation cards are a little way off I wanted to give you the ‘heads up’ on the date.

We plan to get married in the Afternoon of Sunday 28th September at Finzean nr. Banchory in Deeside Scotland (about 25miles south-west of Aberdeen).

So keep that weekend free!

One of the big things we knew we wanted to do was to have a lively ceilidh band for the evening (sounds like Kayleigh), half because Ceilidhs are huge amounts of fun and half to give those cornishmen and women a good indoctrination into some scottish culture.

To those scared cornish reading this imagining morris dancing fear not, Celidh dancing resembles more of a friendly rugby match.

Anyway, we had hoped to see if Rich Spriggs still had a celidh band as they’ve been awesome at CLAN, but alas the band has gone there seperate ways, so I was wondering if anyone knows a great lively celidh band in the North East of Scotland? Leave your comments by going to the bottom of this page.

Seing as the wedding is likely to be with 5-6 months (about 160 days!) we are trying to get busily to work on ideas and plans for the day.

We really want the day to be fun for everyone and we want to be as creative as possible in how we do things.

We know there is plenty of creative juice flowing around out there and we want all your ideas for fun and quirky ways of doing the more traditional things within a wedding day, so heres your chance, we made a space at the bottom of this page (or click on ‘1 comment’ on the top right hand) where you can leave your name and email if you have one, and then your ideas in the big white box, feel free to leave more than one and use examples from other weddings you’ve been to, we want your ideas to stir up ours as well! Thanks for your help.

Who knows if your idea is good enough I may even mention you in the Grooms speech.

Disclaimer: This does not guarantee you will be mentioned, in fact you very well may not be mentioned for your idea, just don’t get your hopes up, thats all Im saying

We went to Paris and got engaged on the 18th April 2008.

View some photos we took here

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