A wedding nightmare turned into a Celtic dream when, after a slew of issues, the locals on the beautiful Isle of Skye decided to help the visiting bride and groom.
Amanda and Paul Riesel of Florida, who planned to leave a solid four-day cushion between their flight and their big day on Skye in the Scottish Hebrides, encountered every problem in the airline company playbook, including several delays, a cancellation or two, and lost luggage.
Their flight from Orlando to the UK was rerouted to Philadelphia, then to Heathrow, then to Inverness, and finally to Skye. They arrived on the island at 11:00 p.m. the night before their wedding, after spending a total of 72 hours aboard planes or stuck in airports.
Enter wedding photographer Rosie Woodhouse. She felt compelled to act after learning of their difficulties and that, lacking everything except their rings, they were on the verge of abandoning their long-planned Skye wedding.
“I told them I was sure I could make this work, and Skye is an amazing place,” Woodhouse said. Rosie decided to post a plea to a social media community, and local islanders responded brilliantly even before breakfast. “We had a full kilt set for Paul and a beautiful wedding dress for Amanda,” she stated.
The wedding gown was worn by a local cafeteria lady at a school, a profession in which Amanda, by chance, also works. She felt there was no better solution than to put on the special garment of a special woman who cared for children in the same way Amanda does.
“The people of Skye will be famous in Orlando because we will tell anyone who will listen that they are the reason our love was cemented into a perfectly imperfect wedding day,” Amanda said.
The Isle of Skye, with its emerald green grass, dark moody skies, rugged landscape, and wild coasts, doesn’t get much better after three days in airports, and even though the wedding lost much of the veneer they had planned, the photos at least convey that everything worked out in the end.
