Family brides are kirk’s only in 66 years
WHEN Sadie Moles married Alexander Chisholm in a rural Highland church more than six decades ago, she was starting a very exclusive family tradition.
For Mrs Chisholm, her daughter – and now her granddaughter – are the only brides to have married at Errogie Free Church, in Invernessshire, in almost 66 years.
The trio was completed on Saturday when Michelle Macdonald, 31, wed Michael Strachan, 32.
Looking on, and remembering their own special days were her 93-year-old grandmother Mrs Chisholm, who married on June 10, 1953, and the bride’s mother Catherine, who was married to Ewen Macdonald on November 12, 1983.
The wedding is likely to be the last in the church, which closed its doors two years ago. Part of the 148-year-old building, in the tiny hamlet between Inverness and Fort Augustus, has fallen into disrepair and the church – which is part of the Greyfriars Stratherrick Free Church Congregation – was put up for sale last February.
The new Mrs Strachan, a pharmacy technician at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, who lives in Portlethen, Aberdeenshire, said: ‘I’d always wanted to get married in the same church as my mum and gran, so although it was for sale, we got in touch with Greyfriars to find out if it would be possible to reopen it. They checked if it was safe to use, and came back to say it was.
‘We got engaged in the summer and sped things along in case it does get sold. We just had to clean it up a bit and tidy up outside.’
Locals say an absence of local reception venues is behind the lack of weddings. The Strachans held theirs in nearby Stratherrick Hall,