Scotland in Made of Honour

Scotland might be best remembered by a generation of movie-goers as the bleak backdrop for 1996’s Trainspotting, but the only thing that romantic comedy Made of Honour has with the Irvine Welsh drugs drama is actor Kevin McKidd. The actor stars as the very scottishly named Colin McMurray in the rom-com, an aristocrat engaged to Michelle Monaghan’s Hannah. Their wedding plans are disrupted when Hannah’s best friend and subsequent ‘maid of honour’, playboy Tom (played by Grey’s Anatomy’s heart-throb Patrick Dempsey) decides he wants her and attempts to win her love. The film’s action takes in Manhattan and London but it is in the Highlands, as the location for the impending nuptials, that the background really comes to the fore with Dempsey dubbing it “another character in the movie”.

“I think going to Scotland makes it immediately romantic,” says Dempsey. “As soon as you see the castle and the countryside, it’s like “this is beautiful,” who doesn’t want to go there and get married? You can feel the difference when you’re there. The water, the countryside – it’s so beautiful and doesn’t look like anywhere else. And the local people were great – I couldn’t understand a word they said, but they’re very, very sweet.”

Co-star Michelle Monaghan concurred: “It’s such a beautiful, beautiful place. We went to the Isle of Skye, and it’s like a page out of a fairytale, honestly. And for us I think it was such a benefit to shoot there because we’re shooting a romantic comedy, and it really elevated the romance of this film, I mean there was castles and rolling hills and wildflowers, and it doesn’t get really much more romantic than that, so it was really cool.” Central to the film’s plot are locations such as Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye, which has also appeared in Highlander, and the 300-year-old bed and breakfast, the Clachaig Inn.