Bethany + Fraser at Marshall Meadows | September 2025
“Thank you so much for everything. It was perfect.”
All my weddings are special (I feel like a primary school teacher who can’t admit favourites), but marrying Bethany and Fraser was particularly special because I’ve known her in a different capacity. And a vulnerable one, at that. Lycra-ed up and in downward dog, copying her graceful moves as my yoga teacher.
I’ve been going to Tru Yoga in Alnwick since I was pregnant with my twins, before Bethany retrained as a yoga teacher, and it was there that I was first taught by the warm and inimitable Tracey. A mother figure to anyone who comes through the studio doors, and someone I felt really protected and supported by when I was pregnant.
So, it perhaps goes without saying that I was excited to marry Bethany to her Fraser, and I was very excited when Bethany told me that dear Tracey would be playing a key role in their ceremony: doing the handfasting.
Photography by Tom Richardson Photos
On the day - the beautiful, blue sky September day - it was so fun to be playing different roles with Bethany. Rather than pupil-teacher in the studio we were celebrant-bride in the stunning venue of Marshall Meadows, a total change to our usual dynamic.
Tracey was bloody fantastic, lending a natural woo-woo warmth to the handfasting, and doing it under heroic fracture-boot conditions since she’d not long before broken her foot on a hike and been airlifted by mountain rescue. I kid you not.
And, according to the tale she told after the ceremony, unbelievably attractive mountain rescue blokes to boot. Pun intended.
The ceremony was full-to-cauldron-brim with witchy goodness, because Bethany loves her spooky, celestial, yogic stuff. And it was full-to-brim with raw emotion too, because this is a couple who weathered hard times in their twenties.
There were a couple of Very Important People (and a pooch) who should get a mention at this point. Digby, the couple’s beloved whippet, got a huge cheer when he came down the aisle with Bethany’s best friend Charley. And Fraser’s sister Emily was the ring bearer, a VIP on the day for her role with the wedding bands, but also a VIP for the rest of her life because she provided her brother with a bone marrow transplant when he needed one, and all we had her to thank for a healthy, thriving groom. Able to enjoy his wedding day, at peak health. No longer in recovery but doing mad endeavours like the Great North Run.
You could feel the goodwill in the room towards these two, two people who met as kids, got together as young adults, and have supported each other in every way along the way.
I included a quote I love on marriage. Something the fabulous Susan Sarandan says in Shall We Dance, when asked what getting married really is. It’s a bang-average film, but a brilliant speech:
“We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.”
And Bethany and Fraser, with various life changes and challenges, including an unbelievably difficult cancer diagnosis and recovery, have been true hands-on witnesses to each other’s lives. And, on their wedding day, we all wished them a lifetime of marital witness to more joy, more fun, and more woo-woo warmth.