FAQ

Pitlochry Town Hall.

The afternoon of Saturday 7^th November 2026.

The afternoon of Sunday 8^th November 2026.

It's a Jewish mixed-faith blessing officiated by Leo's rabbi, Rabbi Mark.

For one thing, we thought having a couple of different events would be useful in case people travelling from further afield can't make one. For another, scheduling the Jewish one wouldn't work on Saturday. We could schedule them both together, but we can't have a Jewish wedding because Jay's not Jewish* and none of the Jewish denominations in the UK do mixed marriages yet for various reasons*.

* See the bonus questions.

Yes! Sunset will be around 4.30pm, so it would be nice if those of us who are interested could light candles and make kiddush at the hostel on Friday evening before going out for dinner. Let Leo know if you're interested.

WHATEVER PUTS YOU IN THE MOOD TO CELEBRATE. We will be wearing kilts. We will also probably be seen in jeans, and pyjamas if you're lucky. Folks travelling up from England, remember that it's November in the Highlands.

Only if they're named on your invite (or we explicitly gave you a +1)! We'd like to keep the guest list to people we know.

Yes, if you think they will have a nice time and you will have a nice time! Please let us know if you would like to bring young children, so we can ask better qualified people (like you) what we can do to support you all having a nice time.

Yes, if you think they will have a nice time and you will have a nice time! If you have a dog that you don't bring, we would like you to bring a printed-out picture of them instead. Give us a heads up if you do want to bring your dog.

Maybe! Please get in touch with us and we'll find out.

Our guest list currently is around 80 people.

By car, the A9 runs directly to it. It's roughly an hour and a half to two hours from either Edinburgh or Glasgow.

By train, Pitlochry is on a direct line from London Kings Cross, passing through York and Edinburgh.

By plane, Dundee Airport is closest (a 45 minute drive) and receives some flights from London. Edinburgh Airport is the next closest, followed by Inverness.

If you're interested in carpooling, let us know and we'll put you in touch with people coming from the same place.

There's a plethora of hotels in and around Pitlochry. It's a very small town; if you stay anywhere remotely close to the train station, you'll be a few minutes walk from all the places we are likely to have events at.

We've booked the Pitlochry Youth Hostel for our exclusive use over the weekend, so if you want to get in on a cheap place to stay, let us know. See accommodation for more details.

Not very. We're aiming for ''organised chaos''.

This website, including this page, will be updated as and when we finish deciding things.

By the time wedding invitations are sent out and we ask you to RSVP, which will probably be in the spring, we should have a clearer picture of the weekend.

When we get to a relatively finished point (i.e. when numbers, venues, organised activities, and food plans are more thoroughly nailed down), Leo will send out an email to everyone. This will probably be a few months before the wedding. The further out we are, the more nebulous everything is.

If there's something specific and important that it looks like we haven't thought of, please get in touch.

Strap in for a convoluted thing, courtesy of Leo.

Because of our respective life choices, Jay's not Jewish according to Liberal Judaism (the denomination I'm affiliated with) while I am. (Interestingly, because of the way our respective grandparents happened to arrange themselves, it's the other way round according to Orthodox Judaism: but that's less pertinent.)

The historical background to the following is long and complex, and I don't know enough of it, and there are other Jewish denominations in the UK, but: the problem for us is that rabbis affiliated with Liberal Judaism (LJ) are not allowed to perform mixed marriages, i.e. marriages between a Jew and a non-Jew, under the auspices of LJ. The reason given by LJ, a UK-specific denomination, is that the [secular] law stipulates that both partners must be Jewish for them to be married by a Jewish institution. This is true in England and Wales, which have, as far as I can tell, at least five different legal types of weddings. (Broadly, they're divided into religious and secular weddings, but then some religious weddings have additional special rules. The specific rule about Jewish weddings, I think, is that both partners have to be a member of a synagogue, and, again for various reasons, up until very recently there have been no synagogues in the UK offering full membership to non-Jews. This has now changed in at least one place, which might lead to some interesting movement on this topic.)

HOWEVER. Scots law is a distinct legal system, and there are different rules about weddings here. In Scotland, there are really only two types of marriages: civil and religious (or belief). The stipulations for a religious or belief wedding are that:

1. It's carried out by an approved celebrant—
2. Who is a representative of a religious or belief body.

So the bottleneck now goes back to being on the LJ side.

HOWEVER, the second. There's not a particularly big Jewish population in general in Scotland, let alone specifically Liberal Jews. I'm a member of the only LJ community in Scotland, and I don't know anyone else who's run into this problem. Presumably it's come up before, but not very often. Despite the fact that LJ puts the reasoning for their position squarely on the (English) law, the denomination as a whole would have to get all of their affiliated rabbis in the UK to agree that we can have mixed marriages, but only in Scotland. This has not happened. It seems not impossible that this whole situation changes in the near future — for one thing, there's a push for marriage reform in general in England and Wales — but right now, Jay and I cannot have a full Jewish wedding.

Vote now on your phones!

1. Tax purposes.
2. We think it would be nice to make our friends and family hang out with each other.
3. It feels right in the soul.
4. To make it harder to break up, as part of an elaborate bet with ourselves.

No!!! That's what the stag do is for.

(Maybe on Sunday morning, as long as you bring him back on time and reasonably intact.)

Yes, there's an incredibly haunted specimen in a Victorian children's playroom at Blair Atholl Castle. The castle also features a portrait of Queen Victoria's favourite dachsund (cylindrical).

Yes! How could you tell?