A Scottish bride had a unique request on her list of wedding gifts, when she asked her guests to donate blood as a gesture of gratitude and appreciation to the donors who helped doctors to save the life of her beloved grand-mother.

Margaret Smith, aged 81, was the guest of honour at the wedding of her grand-daughter and her groom, 35 year old Iain McKenzie.

Margaret had emergency surgery to remove her leg above the knee and survived thanks to a highly skilled surgical team and a live saving blood transfusion.

The 31 year old bride Claire tenderly embraced her gran outside St Mirins Cathedral in her home town of Paisley before walking down the aisle to meet her husband to be.

At their wedding reception, the newly weds gave out ‘Give Blood’ themed wedding favours and the groom offered information on local donor centres during his speech.

Claire speaks about the grand mother’s ordeal, who is currently reliant on electric wheelchairs :-

“Gran was diagnosed with critical limb ischemia in her left leg and her only option of survival was to have the leg amputated above the knee.

She required at least three pints of blood following her op and had people not donated that blood, she simply would not have been here to celebrate our big day. It means the world to us to have her at our wedding, so we decided to try to recruit as many donors as possible on our special day.

Instead of giving everyone favours they would just leave behind or stuff in a drawer, we thought it might be nice to ask guests to give something back.

There’s a massive shortage of donors in Scotland and the situation is worse around Christmas, so hopefully some of our guests will try giving blood. My gran is doing really well now and even though she is in a wheelchair she promised to bum-shuffle on the dance floor at our reception.

Without the blood transfusions she would never have made it this far.”

Claire, Iain and their immediate families all give blood on a regular basis.