Marie & Olivers Modern Celtic Wedding at The Engine Works, Glasgow
Written by MNT Ben
Images by Victoria Baker Photography
Some weddings don’t whisper. They swagger in wearing boots, glitter, heritage and noise. Marie and Oliver’s wedding in Glasgow didn’t politely arrive. It detonated — joyfully, deliberately — like confetti with intent!
Meet Marie & Oliver
They met where all good modern love stories should begin: volume up, lights down, Barrowlands humming in Glasgow. Enter Shikari punching through the air. Mutual friends, accidental proximity, inevitable chemistry.
“As soon as I saw Oliver, I knew I had to get to know him.”
It’s the kind of sentence that resists embellishment.
The Proposal (with Pepper the Dog)
Isle of Skye. Talisker Bay. Nature showing off like it always does when humans attempt romance. Black sand, waterfall, cinematic drama dialled irresponsibly high.
“The beach was completely empty apart from us, and Oliver got down on one knee and Pepper got very confused and excited while I cry-laughed haha. It was the perfect conditions for a proposal – quiet, in a beautiful place, and with our little family together”
A romantic Scottish proposal with their dog by their side, set against one of Skye’s most iconic beaches, set the tone for everything that followed…
The Planning Journey
Planning followed not as panic but as process. Two years, which sounds generous until you realise how efficiently time compresses itself around weddings:
“We gave ourselves 2 years to plan, and had pretty much everything at least booked or ordered, with about 6 months to spare. After that it was just finalising details and paying invoices! While 2 years seems like a long time, the deadlines do really creep up on you, and the last few months absolutely fly in”
Marie and Oliver approached their Glasgow wedding planning with something refreshing: decisiveness. Key wedding suppliers booked early. Details resolved calmly. The final months spent refining rather than scrambling.
Budget & Priorities
With a wedding budget of £30,000, priorities became less about spectacle and more about coherence. Scottish elements weren’t layered on as theme but integrated as identity — handfasting, ceilidh dancing, thistles, kilts, a neon Slàinte sign glowing less like décor and more like punctuation.
“Having done a bit of research on what we wanted and the average prices of each service or vendor. We ended up spending just under that amount, but not by much!”
Oliver is a massive Lord of the Rings fan, so all the tables were named after regions in Middle Earth. And a subtle but telling twist for the drinks reception - Piano covers of rock songs!
A reminder that tradition and individuality have never truly been opposites.
The Venue
The Engine Works provided the ideal backdrop for their industrial Glasgow wedding. Industrial wedding venues have a particular honesty about them. Brick, steel, texture, atmosphere. A wedding venue with presence before styling even enters the conversation.
For couples searching for an industrial wedding venue in Glasgow, The Engine Works offers scale without sterility, character without compromise.
The Looks
Marie’s bridal look carried a modern romantic softness that played beautifully against those raw architectural lines, and sage green bridesmaid dresses, complimenting the blue and purple tones in the flowers.
Oliver’s styling, complete with kilt and sporran for himself and his groomsmen, delivered something timeless and sharp, the kind of aesthetic that doesn’t demand attention yet inevitably holds it.
The Energy of the Day
What Marie and Oliver valued most about the day feels quietly instructive. Not the staged set pieces. Not the moments designed purely for wedding photography. But the brief, unscripted intervals — conversations, shared glances, fragments of time with people who exist well beyond the wedding itself.
“Our favourite parts of the day were actually those moments in between the main events where we could just spend some time with all of the people that we loved in one place. The time goes by so fast that we really cherished those moments of just getting to chat and enjoy the company of our loved ones.”
The magic often lives in the margins, particularly during a full-day Glasgow wedding celebration.
The Legendary “Catty Hour”
Late in the evening came what they affectionately labelled “Catty Hour.” The wedding DJ shifting gears into heavier tracks, Cathouse energy filling the room (if you’re from Glasgow, I’m sure you’ll know), the dance floor evolving into something gloriously unrestrained. Not chaos exactly, but release.
“As we are both on the alternative side, we had what was called “Catty Hour” near the end of the night, where the DJ played heavier songs that would usually play in the Cathouse - for us and all of our friends to have a little mosh haha!”
A reminder that the best wedding receptions create space for genuine expression over polite choreography.
Favourite Parts & Planning Realities
Marie & Oliver were refreshingly honest about the wedding planning process.
Suppliers, they reflected, were wonderful.
Guests, inevitably, were more complex.
“We were very organised with our planning and that meant that the day went off without a hitch and we could relax and enjoy it. It can get stressful at times - trying to organise the guests was more stressful than any of the suppliers ha!”
Because weddings are about people, and people rarely behave with spreadsheet efficiency.
Advice for Other Couples
Their advice to other couples planning a wedding in Glasgow or across Scotland remained disarmingly practical. Plan deliberately. Book early. Resist the gravitational pull of microscopic worries. The details that feel enormous in advance tend to dissolve entirely on the day.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff too much – you honestly won’t notice on the day and neither will your guests.”
Amen.
The Dream Team
Marie & Oliver pulled together an incredible lineup of wedding suppliers, several of whom they found at The Un-Wedding Show:
Venue: The Engine Works
Photographer: Victoria Baker Weddings
Caterer: Regis Banqueting
Flowers: Alchemy Floral Design
Styling: Make Believe Events
Cake: Liggy’s Cakes
Pizza Truck: Dough Man’s Land
Handfasting Cord: Ceotha
DJ: Paddy Gordon
Proof of the magic that can happen when you experience a wedding supplier’s work in real life and just know.
Marie and Oliver’s wedding didn’t attempt to reinvent anything.
It simply refused to dilute itself.
Scottish wedding traditions woven naturally into the experience. Alternative instincts expressed without announcement. An industrial Glasgow wedding venue allowed to remain characterful rather than disguised.
A celebration that felt less like performance and more like continuity.
Effortless, personal, and quietly unforgettable.
Ready To Start Planning Your Big Day?
If Marie and Oliver’s Celtic wedding celebration has inspired you to start thinking about your own, we can help you with that!
Why not buy tickets to one of our upcoming The Un-Wedding Shows where you can connect with the best wedding creatives who you'll genuinely love!
And in the meantime, you can explore the Book of Love Directory to find a curated list of the best, independent wedding suppliers in the UK and beyond.