A WELL-TIMED engagement in March 2023, just before lambing, saw Dizzy White and Grant Runciman decide to get married quite quickly. “We are so laid back we would never get round to it otherwise,” recalls Dizzy. “Grant and I knew we wanted a relaxed wedding and something personal to us.

“From start to finish it probably took about a year to plan. We knew we wanted certain suppliers and we had to get them booked in quickly. We had planned to have our wedding at my parents’ farm in a marquee in one of the front fields but about three months into the planning stage they decided to sell the farm and retire.


“There was a small panic over where to have the wedding, but Grant suggested that we hold it at his grandparents’ house just outside Stow. Their house is set in a walled garden and once we had properly discussed it, we decide that it would be the perfect place to get married.”

Dizzy is a former wedding/events planner so knew exactly what to do – with some help from Grant on ‘the important bits, like the bar’! She says: “I also have quite a large family so my sisters, mum and mother-in-law were a great help. Everyone mucked in to get the garden looking beautiful, plus it meant there were plenty of people to deal with any issues on the day.”

Everything went like clockwork although Dizzy had to make a mad dash to the local Asda after realising there were no tablecloths from any of the suppliers.

Meanwhile, the couple’s wedding car to take them from Castle View Lodges in Lauder to The Walled Garden in Stow was Dizzy’s little brother’s Land Rover. “My dad thought it would be lovely to tie some ribbon onto the front,” she says. “However, he couldn’t find the remaining ribbon so had a plan to use first aid bandages which then blew off at the top of Lauder Common and got slightly stuck in the wheel.

“As we were already late, I was getting a little stressed and then we got stuck behind a tractor on the 15 minutes from the venue. It drizzled a little at the beginning of the ceremony, but we powered through, and the sun came out once I started walking up the aisle which was perfect.”

While Dizzy and Grant had been very insistent on having a small wedding the Runciman family is relatively large, so it escalated to 94 during the day with an extra 20 or so at night. However, Dizzy says this ended up being a lovely number as it meant the couple could have a good chat with everyone.

As both Dizzy and Grant were both quite nervous about standing up and speaking in front of people, they opted to go to the local registry office the week before for the official marriage. Says Dizzy: “On the day, my wee brother Struan conducted our wedding ceremony. It was absolutely perfect as it was still official enough to be a proper ceremony but also really personal and funny. We had input from some of our friends and also some tips for the future from both sets of parents.”

Grant, unable to decide on just one best man, had three – Ben, Marc and Richard – and no ushers. “This made the speeches hilarious and there were so many people to make sure he was dressed with his shirt ironed,” laughs Dizzy, who had both her sisters, Avril and Claire, as bridesmaids.

“We are all very close, so we had a very chilled evening the night before and they helped with all the little details in the lead-up and on the wedding day.”

As soon as they had decided on a date for the wedding, they call on Rosie’s Catering. “We have been to lots of farm shows and weddings where she has catered and she also had done some previous Runciman weddings,” says Dizzy. “Her canapes are particularly exceptional, so we opted for loads of those instead of a starter. We then went for a cold buffet on each table, full of cold meats and salads, followed by ice cream and meringues. Everything was incredible and we couldn’t recommend her more.

Determined for the day to be very relaxed and not ‘over the top’, Dizzy opted to make her own wedding cake a couple of days before. “We were having so much fun that we didn’t even get around to doing and official ‘cake cutting’, although by the end of the night we did notice there had been a few nibbles out of it, courtesy of our New Zealand guests – a Kiwi tradition apparently.

“I wanted to enjoy the process of wedding planning as much as possible, so I cut out the extra stress of wedding flowers. I bought dried flowers online for our bouquets and then got dried centrepieces and added some lavender from my mum’s garden. As The Walled Garden was already such a gorgeous setting, and along with plant pots from my mum’s garden, we didn’t need too much decoration, so we were lucky we didn’t need to spend any extra on floral arrangements.”

In keeping with the relaxed theme, the wedding invitations stipulated ‘no hats, no ties and garden party attire’. “Everyone loved this as they were all comfortable in shorts and shirts and summer dresses,” says Dizzy. “My husband hates getting dressed up – it’s hard work to get him out of old rugby shirts and work shorts, and to be honest I feel the same.

“His shirt and trousers were from a suit shop in Edinburgh, bought for his cousin’s wedding (although he did have a jacket in case it got cold). My dress was a Jane Hill dress from a shop called Marrime in Newcastle which I changed out of at night and into my Birkenstocks and a short sparkly dress that I got online.”

Dizzy admits that the couple even thought about not bothering to have a wedding at all but are so glad that they did. Says Dizzy: “We wanted our wedding to be as chilled and as personal as possible. We had a tipi marque which didn’t need much decoration and along with the dried flowers, double sheets and personalised poems for everyone, it looked great.

“Grant and I have been together for about 10 years so there were a lot of jokes about it being a long time coming. Because of this, everyone was just so happy to be there and had the greatest time. We were worried about being the centre of attention, but I can say hand on heart it was the best day of our lives.

“I got to marry my best friend in front of all of my favourite people. Grant asked me if I would do it all again, but I honestly wouldn’t, because we could never improve on the most perfect day.”

Dizzy and Grant recently booked their honeymoon to Canada where they plan to hire an RV for a week then stay in hotels the following week. “We hope to take in the sights of Toronto and Montreal, along with the amazing food and also – luckily or unluckily – timed it during the week of Ottawa’s country show.”

While Dizzy’s parents are farmers, having lived just outside Hawick then moving to a farm a mile or so out of Selkirk and are now retired, Grant farms with his dad at Muircleugh Farm just outside Lauder. Dizzy works part-time for a children’s charity which means she has lots of extra time to dose lambs and dress Texels.

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