Top Model's Scottish castle wedding to be featured on TLC show

Springfield business owner and America's Next Top Model 2008 winner Whitney Lee Thompson said she's always dreamed of having a destination wedding.

So when fiancé Ian Forrester proposed to her in 2013, they chose Scotland to exchange their wedding vows in the fall of the next year.

Then life happened.

While the wedding stayed on course, Whitney Thompson said portions of planning the event took a backseat.

The couple, who was shopping for houses last year in Springfield, where the bride's father David Thompson serves as police chief, spotted a closed-down restaurant on the city's downtown square.

Whitney Thompson and Forrester opened Whitney Lee's Southern Sweets and Savories and have been busy managing it and cooking daily since its opening day last June, just five months prior to their scheduled November wedding.

"Two weeks before the wedding, people were asking me why I had not picked out a dress yet," Whitney Thompson said. "I said, 'I'm busy. We are at the restaurant seven days a week.'"

Then the phone rang.

"I got very lucky, because someone just called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted a wedding dress," she said.

Producers from the TLC show "Curvy Brides" offered to fly Whitney Thompson's family to Washington D.C. to film the bride-to-be selecting the perfect wedding gown.

The network later flew a crew over to Scotland to film portions of the wedding itself, for an episode of the program scheduled to air in April.

Whitney Thompson and Forrester, both from Florida, were wanting a wedding ceremony with the opposite setting of sand and sun. So Scotland, she said, was the perfect place.

"We actually got to go castle shopping when we were living over there," Whitney Thompson said. "We found this amazing castle, Ackergill Tower, built in the 1400s in Wick, Scotland. The castle has rooms for rent, along with villas available along the beach."

This 15th-century castle, located on the north east coast of the Scottish Highlands, provided the wedding party with more of a wedding weekend instead of just a wedding day.

"The day before the wedding we went horseback riding on Brora Beach," Whitney Thompson said. "We had a rehearsal dinner and then a bonfire, with a piper piping on the beach. A ghost storyteller came and told everyone ghost stories over drams of whiskey."

The bride described the actual wedding day, Nov. 14, 2014, as the perfect day in Scotland for a wedding.

"It wasn't as cold there as it was here," Whitney Thompson said from her restaurant on the square in Springfield. "It was snowing here that day and the temperature was in the upper 40s there. It was an overcast, moody sky, exactly what I wanted. The stormy sky made the water look turquoise."

Whitney Thompson said the day, with its perfect setting, was not a stressful one, but a full weekend spent focusing on family and friends.

The bride wore a champagne blush-color wedding gown with white lace and Swarovski crystal embellishments.

Forrester wore a traditional Scottish kilt highlighted with his family tartan. The men in the wedding party related to Forrester wore a tartan tie representing his family and the Thompson men wore a tartan tie representing their heritage.

David Thompson said, as father-of-the-bride, he was not worried about giving away his daughter to Forrester.

"I knew he was the right person for her," Chief Thompson said. "They've known each other since school and I love the fact that they met each other on a school bus. They have always come back together, though they've dated other people."

David Thompson said Forrester was sweating and a little nervous when he asked for Whitney's hand in marriage.

"I got the feeling he had practiced it several times," David Thompson said. "I thought about terrorizing him a little bit, but I decided not to. I know it had to be difficult approaching the police chief for his daughter's hand in marriage."

As for Forrester, words could barely describe the feelings he had upon seeing his bride for the first time in her bridal gown on their wedding day.

"It was breathtaking," Forrester said. "She was radiating beauty. She looked amazing. She was beautiful."