Claire & Callum, the barn wedding that turned into a conga line
Claire & Callum · Summer 2026 · The Barn
Written by Mhairi Preston, Wedding Coordinator
A violinist at the ceremony, a conga line after the meal, a groom hiding behind the barn bar, and a wedding dress with mud halfway up it. Claire and Callum came to Glen Clova to throw a party, and that's exactly what they did.
It started on the Monday night
Most weddings start with a ceremony. Claire and Callum's started with a barbecue. Their guests came up to the glen on the Monday night, ate outside, and were still at it long after the plates went back to the kitchen. By the time anyone said a vow, the whole room already knew each other. That's the point of arriving early. Nobody was stuck making small talk over a welcome drink, because they'd got all of that out of the way the night before.
Why the barn
Claire and Callum wanted a party, and they wanted all of it in one place. Plenty of barn wedding venues in Scotland will give you a room for six hours and a hard stop at midnight. Here the barn was theirs and the estate was theirs, with no taxi rank waiting at the end of the night. The ceremony itself started quietly, a violinist playing, everyone sitting up a bit straighter. Two very small flower girls, doing their jobs beautifully. It was calm and it was sweet. It didn't stay calm for long.
The shoe game, then the conga
After the meal came the shoe game. Claire and Callum sat back to back, each holding one of the other's shoes, answering the kind of questions you can only answer honestly when you can't see the other person's face. Who wears the trousers. That sort of thing. The room enjoyed it considerably more than the two of them did. Then they took over the speaker. Their own playlist, every cheesy song on it, no apology offered for any of them. The conga line went round the barn and kept going. There was a photo booth as well, which by that point in the night was turning out photographs that won't be going on anyone's mantelpiece.
"Where the hell is my husband?"
We asked Claire in the afternoon whether she wanted to do anything for the evening call-in. She said she didn't know. She asked if it was too late. It's never too late. So we suggested "Where the hell is my husband?". The song plays, the room waits for the line, and the husband appears. That's the whole thing, and it lives or dies on where he appears from. We asked Callum whether he fancied hiding behind the bar. Then, since he looked like he could manage it, whether he fancied coming back over the top of it. He said yes to both, so we put a set of steps behind the bar in case he needed the help. Claire came in with Fiona to a room that had very obviously been let in on the secret. The song got to the line. Callum came over the bar. The place went up, and the whole thing had been decided about four hours earlier.
The dress
By then Claire's dress had mud most of the way up it. She'd been out in the glen for photographs, then back out in the glen because she wanted to be, and the hem took the worst of it. She didn't care in the slightest. Some brides look after the dress and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Claire wanted to be in the middle of everything, so the dress went wherever she went. It's the detail we remember most clearly about the day, because it tells you exactly what sort of wedding they were after. They weren't precious about how any of it looked. They just wanted everybody to have a good time, and everybody did.
Still dancing at the turnaround
One guest, well into her seventies, wouldn't leave the bar while the team turned the room around at the end of the night. The music was still on, so she was still dancing. She was at reception first thing the next morning to tell us what a good night she'd had.
With thanks to
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