Kilted yoga star Finlay Wilson is deliriously happy.
He’s just marked five years of marriage to the love-of-his-life, fellow yoga teacher Alan Lambie.
“We’re both each other’s favourite person,” beams Finlay, 38. “We laugh riotously on a daily basis.”
The couple are fresh back from a trip to Italy – but haven’t yet had a chance to celebrate their anniversary with friends and family.
Finlay, who lives in Dundee’s West End, became known globally as the ‘kilted yogi’ after performing cheeky tartan-clad exercise routines in social media clips that went viral.
He and Alan, 46, had planned to get married on June 7, 2020, to mark the anniversary of their engagement – when Finlay proposed during a Pride parade in Washington DC in 2019.
But thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, they feared they would be forced to cancel.
Michelle Visage to the rescue!
That was until RuPaul’s Drag Race star Michelle Visage stepped in to save the day.
Ultimately, she enabled the couple to tie the knot during a virtual ceremony that was slap, bang in the middle of the pandemic – on May 29, 2020.
It was a wedding with a difference, thrown together quickly with bits and bobs from B&Q and on a seriously tight budget.
Finlay, who runs Heart Space Yoga & Bodyworks on Scott Street, takes up the story.
“We’d been doing loads of work on our garden and hoped to use it as our wedding venue, with around 30 to 40 guests in an intimate ceremony,” he says.
“We were really disappointed when we thought we’d have to cancel and posted on Instagram.”
The post attracted loads of attention, and fans suggested Finlay and Alan contact Michelle Visage – who was offering her services as an ordained minister to marry couples.
“We thought, och, it’s never going to happen, but we sent an email anyway,” says Finlay. “They came back, and were like, yeah, let’s do it.”
Mad dash to make dreams come true
It was a frantic dash to get everything organised. Pandemic rules meant there were few places you could go, so the couple dressed their house for the wedding from B&Q.
“The day before the wedding, we queued up outside B&Q so we could get stones to make our front path – the aisle – look nicer,” recalls Finlay.
“It was a budget wedding. We only had 36 hours to get everything together.
“One of our friends is a baker who had a cancelled wedding cake that he rapidly re-iced for us.
“We also managed to convince the florist up the road, which wasn’t technically open, to put some bits together for us.
“Our neighbours were amazing, too, putting out plants, flowers, bunting and balloons, and using rose petals as confetti. It was very boujee.”
Intimate ceremony
The rules only allowed Finlay and Alan – plus two close friends – in the garden during the ceremony.
But neighbours stood on stepladders to celebrate over the garden wall, and folk on the street looked in, too.
“It was great to see people in their glad rags, smiling and laughing, despite the 2m distance,” says Finlay.
“Our families were on Zoom. My family dressed up but my dad didn’t quite believe what was happening, so he was wearing a running vest! He stood out like a sore thumb.
“And I swear my mum didn’t think it was real because she wasn’t there in person.”
Finlay and Alan cut each other’s hair and cobbled together clothes they found in their wardrobes. Thankfully, there was no shortage of kilts.
Another highlight was when two kids Finlay had taught yoga piped the couple down the aisle.
“There were lots of really sweet moments,” he muses.
“After the ceremony we went down the street to Magdalen Green for the party bit.
What about the first dance?
“We had our first dance in the bandstand. Our friend, Farrah Fawcett, brought her violin and played her version of Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head by request.”
Finlay’s twin brother, Alastair, took the wedding photos, which Finlay describes as “really joyous”.
Michelle, who was in LA, conducted proceedings via a tablet on a stick in her garden.
The wedding featured on her BBC programme How’s Your Head, Hun? a few weeks later.
And the star, who sent Alan and Finlay a framed wedding certificate, messages to congratulate them every anniversary.
However, the couple’s dreams of a transatlantic honeymoon were foiled by the ‘traffic light’ travel system.
It was a year before they had a ‘mini-trip’ to Lanzarote.
“We treated that as ‘honeymoon part one’, and then went to Mexico not long after,” says Finlay.
Five years on…
So, to 2025 and five years on from the big day, have they marked their fifth anniversary yet?
“We’re in talks with our family about that because they never had a party for the actual wedding!” says Finlay.
“I don’t think Alan and I going out for breakfast on our anniversary cut the mustard.
“But for us, going to Naples was convenient timing. We were both like, ‘gosh, how the heck is it five years?'”
The couple have been together eight years, having met in Edinburgh when Finlay was teaching a yoga workshop.
Finlay jokes that he “poached” Alan for Dundee: he’s originally from West Lothian.
So what’s the secret to their happy marriage?
Finlay reckons the ritual of sitting down to eat together has huge significance.
“We do have different interests but we really centre our days around meals.
“We eat three meals a day together. And I prepare all of our meals. That gives us a lot of time together.
“When I hear of other couples that have separate dinners at different times, I’m like, ‘oooh’.
“We’ve also got a dog to walk – and we’re just really fond of each other’s company.”+
So how has life change in the five years since they got married?
Finlay laughs. “We’re older and more in bits! That’s from doing a physical job.
“Other than that, I don’t think much has changed. We didn’t stop working during the pandemic. We were either teaching online, or when possible, in person.
“The pandemic didn’t change our day-to-day lifestyle. If anything we got closer because we’re both each other’s favourite person.
“We’re really close. We laugh riotously every day.”
Would the couple consider adopting?
“Woah, no,” says Finlay. “Because I teach kids, I’m more than happy to have them for 45 minutes and hand them back!
“I have an identical twin brother who has three kids, so genetically that’s as close as I really need to get to children.”
Conversation