Logistics played a big part in the planning of WWW readers Erin and Robin's wedding day. With them planning their wedding from New York, many of their loved ones were set to travel to Scotland to enjoy the celebrations.

But they still had their dream location, at The Cruin on Loch Lomond; with stunning views it was the perfect backdrop. They had a nature feel to their simple wedding décor, the most luscious bouquets of wild flowers created by Sparrow and Rose and a ceilidh band for the evening.

I love Erin's simple yet stylish look, with her chic J. Crew dress and statement necklace, while Robin opted for a dashing kilt. Ekkk so lovely.

Thanks so very much to the brilliant Lauren McGlynn for sharing her imagery with us this morning.

THE PROPOSAL | Robin had been out of town with work for three weeks, so we decided to go for brunch the weekend he returned. We went to a nice restaurant near our apartment and took a blanket with us to go spend a lazy afternoon in the park afterward. Robin proposed the minute we laid out the blanket - he was too nervous to wait any longer! We spent the rest of the day calling our friends and family to tell them the great news!

THE VISION FOR THE DAY | Because we live far from most of our friends and family (Erin is Canadian, Robin is Scottish, but we're currently living in New York City), we wanted a day where we could spend as much time as possible with our guests. We also both love to be in the mountains, and Robin had done lots of hiking in the beautiful mountains around Loch Lomond, so we were definitely interested in finding a venue in that area. Most of all, we wanted a relaxed day where we could be outside to celebrate with those we love.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We decided to get married the following summer, so we had about a year to plan the wedding. After we got engaged, I thought we'd slowly ease into planning, but I was amazed at how quickly we became knee deep in it! I wanted to give family and friends who would be traveling over from North America lots of notice, so we felt we needed to hurry to tell people a date (which of course meant having a venue booked). I definitely found picking a venue one of the hardest tasks, as we had to do it sight unseen. Since we couldn't go to visit potential venues, Robin's mom, who lives in Scotland, offered to visit the sites we were interested in. She did an amazing amount of legwork for us and the wedding planning would have been a million times harder without her help.

For each venue we were interested in, we also tried to think of where our overseas guests would stay and whether there was public transit or easy access to the venue (we didn't want people to buy a plane ticket and then feel they needed to rent a car just to get to the wedding.) It was exhausting trying to look at all these combinations for each site! Once we finally decided upon our venue, it was a nice change to get to think about the personalised details instead. I was so glad to stumble upon the website for The Glasgow Wedding Collective, which is an amazing collection of independent and unique photographers/florists/hairdressers/bakeries - I think almost all of our vendors are from their group and it made finding great vendors from overseas so much easier! Most of all, I was really glad that Robin wanted to be involved in many aspects of the wedding; it was so nice to work together as a team to plan our big day!

THE BUDGET |Between some savings and some very appreciated contributions from our parents, we figured out our budget pretty early. One of the most helpful things we did was read up on what proportions of wedding budgets typically get spent on the venue, food, the photographer, etc. We used this to mock up a rough budget based on what we had available. We didn't worry about sticking to it exactly, but it let us see that if we wanted to go over budget in one category, we'd have to go under in another. As someone who can be indecisive, it also helped me to decide upon things (if we liked it and it was under budget, then great! Go with it! Stop looking!)

THE VENUE | We completely lucked out with the Cruin, a beautiful restaurant and wedding venue right on Loch Lomond. Although we'd read the venue's website, it hadn't really been on our radar. Robin's mom was in the area checking out some other venue possibilities and noticed they were having a wedding open house. She stopped in and was blown away by the view from the terrace overlooking the loch and by how accommodating all of the staff were. Once we heard her review, we took a closer look and loved the setting and the relaxed feel of the wooden building (and the discount we could get for having a Monday wedding!).

Another selling feature was that we could have our ceremony and our reception at the same place and that there were small cottages to rent just behind the venue. That meant that we could sleep there the night before and the night of the wedding, get ready in the cute cottages, have photos taken on the lovely grounds, and spend the time we might otherwise have spent traveling between locations with our guests. The town of Balloch is also only a 5-minute drive away, so most of our guests were able to stay there and easily get to and from the wedding, which was also important to us. Given that people were flying in from so far away, we didn't want to get married in too remote of a location.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES |Living in New York City, I found dress shopping a little intimidating. I shopped around at a few stores with family and friends who visited, and hadn't quite found the right dress in the right price range. I was getting a little overwhelmed by the whole process, so my sister asked me to describe what I was looking for, and typed my response (something like "light, airy, flowy, simple wedding dress") into Google. One of the first images that popped up was the perfect dress from J. Crew. It was also less than half the price of any of the other ones I'd been looking at, so that was an extra bonus!

Since my dress was quite simple, I wanted a unique and colourful necklace to offset it. I'd bought a beautiful necklace at a Christmas market for my sister and realised that it was the exact style I was looking for. The artist who made it does archaeological digs through out New York City and uncovers old shards of pottery and ceramics to use for jewellery. The necklace she made for me is from a teapot shard from the 1830's found buried in a backyard privy well in the Lower East Side. So that was my something old!

GROOM'S ATTIRE | After looking at many Scottish wedding blogs, Robin got a bit overwhelmed by all of the tartan and nearly decided to get married wearing a suit instead. Luckily, he decided to stick with a kilt, as he and his brothers looked quite sharp! They wore Blackwatch tartan with grey tweed jackets for a less formal look.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We had a humanist wedding and our wonderful celebrant, Mary Wallace, did a fantastic job in getting to know us and helped make our ceremony very personal, touching, and light-hearted. My parents walked me down the aisle, and our moms each read a poem during the ceremony: The Secret of Love by e.e. Cummings and I Belong in Your Arms by Deborah Bridea. After our vows, we recited an Inuit Love Song together.

We wanted to come up with our own vows together, so during a camping trip a few months before the ceremony, we brainstormed and came up with the important promises we wanted to make to each other. Mary also asked us each to secretly write three things we love about the other person, which she incorporated into the ceremony. Because we had worked with her to create the rest of the ceremony, it was a treat to hear those three things for the first time on our wedding day!

Robin and I had a lot of fun choosing the music for the ceremony. Robin loves Juliana Barwick's music, so I walked down the aisle to her song, "Vow", which is full of bells and lovely vocal music. I got so overwhelmed when I heard the music first kick in! While we signed our marriage licence, we played songs from two artists that we both love and try to see live as often as we can: Anais Mitchell's "The Wedding Song" and Ben Harper's "Only Love". After the ceremony, we played Wild Child's "All the Years", a song that always makes me smile and want to dance.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS |My dear friend, Chari, and my sister, Megan, were my two lovely maids of honour. I never really pictured my wedding before I got engaged, but I always knew I would have the two of them in my wedding party. As I am not a huge party planner, it was helpful to get their opinions and support during the wedding planning. After looking at stores in Vancouver and online, we ended up buying their dresses at J. Crew as well. I was looking for either sagey green or a dusty purple dresses, and these ones were just the ticket. I remember looking over at them during the ceremony and being amazed by how perfectly they matched scenery.

GROOMSMEN |Robin's two brothers, Jonny and Andrew, were his best men. Jonny held the rings, while Andrew gave a great best man speech, and did an emergency trip back to Glasgow to pick up Robin's forgotten shoes on the morning of the wedding!

THE FLOWERS |I loved our flowers! I was looking for an informal mix of wildflowers with purples, greens, and whites, and Lisa from Sparrow & Rose did a fantastic job putting together our bouquets. I loved that she included edible greenery like rosemary and mint, something I'd never heard of before. She also brought a great collection of mason jars for smaller bunches of flowers to decorate the tables.

THE CAKE |We left sorting out the cake until the week before the wedding - not something I would recommend, but it worked out well for us! We found a great bakery, Big Bear Bakery, run by a couple that were getting married the next week, so they understood our last minute scrambling. They made us 4 tasty tarts and cakes for a delicious cake table served during the dance to keep up everyone's energy.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | We browsed a lot of wedding blogs and photographers' sites and were drawn to Lauren McGlynn's photos. We loved how natural her pictures are and how well she uses natural lighting to create some beautiful shots. We were so happy that she was free for our wedding. Although we spoke ahead of time, we only met her on the day of the wedding, and luckily we felt really comfortable with her. She came armed with a bunch of different and did a great job of capturing the background moments (kids playing, guests smiling) as well as the big moments. It was really important to me to have family photos taken, but we didn't want to spend hours getting them done. One of the handiest things we did was to make a list of all of the different combinations of shots we wanted ahead of time. My cousin Nicole was in charge of corralling our family into the various permutations of photos and she and Lauren managed to get everyone through quickly so we could get back to the party!

DANCE |Instead of having a DJ, we held a ceilidh dance in the evening. It was so much fun and one of the best parts of the day. Robin and I kicked it off by doing Strip the Willow as our first dance together, with the help of our bridal party. Our band, Clamjamfrie, was full of enthusiasm and did a great job at teaching our overseas guests (and me!) the steps. The tiny dance floor was packed the whole evening and it was great to see everyone having such a good time.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | We knew that Loch Lomond and the mountains would be a lovely backdrop to the wedding, so we didn't feel a need to put together too many decorations, but still wanted to add a few personal touches. Our friends and family helped us to make some decorations at a craft day the week before the wedding. We liked the idea of having some natural rock to go with our wildflowers and the outdoor setting, so we found cheap used slate roofing tiles at a reclamation yard, split them into smaller pieces, and painted them with our guests' names to use as place settings (and souvenirs for the guests). We also found larger slate rocks at a hardware store to rest some of the flower-filled mason jars on, and painted a few big rocks with our names and the date to rest on the cake table. In the months leading up to the wedding, my sister sewed over 75 meters of beautiful bunting that we hung around the terrace where our ceremony was and inside the hall, while Chari made a lovely photo book of our engagement photos that we used as a guest book for people to sign.

Robin and I have hiked and camped in many national parks and wilderness areas around Canada and the US and we wanted to use these park names to identify our tables. We found maps from each of the parks in old road maps and placed them, along with a photo of us in the park, into frames to use to mark the table. A larger map showing all of the parks at the entrance directed each guest to their table. It was fun to delve back through our old photos to find photos we'd forgotten about to use!

THE HONEYMOON | The West Highland Way trail passes very close to our wedding venue, so we decided we would pick up the trail from Loch Lomond and do the hike as our honeymoon. The morning that we left, my bridesmaids decorated our backpacks with Just Married signs, tiny tin cans, and mini bunting, and it was wonderful to get congratulations from other hikers along the trail.

We spent 7 fantastic days hiking over 125 km from Loch Lomond to Fort William. We thought about camping along the way, but worried that a week of tenting in Scottish rain might put a damper on the honeymoon and decided to stay at B&Bs instead. However, we lucked out and only had 15 minutes of rain on the whole trip! After such a busy week leading up to the wedding, it was just perfect to hike through the sunny Scottish countryside reminiscing over our favourite parts of the big day.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS |Seeing our friends and family smiling at us during the ceremony, and the dancing!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES |Planning a wedding in another continent took a lot more effort than we imagined. The hardest part was not being able to visit places in person, or to meet many of our vendors beforehand. We were lucky that all of our vendors were more than happy to Skype with us, so that they could get to know us and get a feel for what we wanted. We found nearly all of our vendors on the Glasgow Wedding Collective, which was so helpful for planning a wedding from far away!

As for specific advice, wear in your wedding shoes. I wish someone had given me that tip, which might be obvious to most people but apparently not to me! I had blisters before the ceremony even started (blister pads are also good advice). Also, I found out by chance only a few months before the wedding that I needed a UK marriage visa to enter the country to get married. Having visited there many times, it didn't even occur to me that I might need one. That was a near miss!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photographer | Lauren McGlynn

Flowers | Lisa Hodgens of Sparrow and Rose

Hair | Jennifer Peffer

Cakes | Big Bear Bakery

Dresses | J. Crew

Necklace | New York Artifact Art

Band | Clamjamfrie

Glasgow Wedding Collective

Oh my, such a beautiful location and loved up couple. It doesn't get much better that that!

Thanks so very much to Erin and Robin for sharing their wedding story with us XOXO Lou