Rolls Royce Edinburgh Opening Party

Mar 13, 2017
4 min read

A week and a half ago I was lucky enough to have been invited to the opening night for the new home of Rolls Royce in Scotland, at the Leven Car Company garage in Corstorphine. I’d been invited by my friend and Event Director Nicola Melrose, as her company Of One Mind had organized and was leading the event. Given her track record of success from previous events and ventures, I was full of confidence for the evening.

She’d asked to meet a bit earlier on the day, so we could catch up and so I could learn a bit more about the night’s proceedings. Arriving at the garage a couple hours ahead of kick off, I was introduced to the Rolls Royce and Leven Motors team, who were all very welcoming and excited to see what the night had in store. I was given a quick tour around the garage with the guys, and I’ve honestly never seen a more incredible space - most notably the overwhelmingly impressive Rolls Royce cars themselves.

Now, only recently have I started to really appreciate to beauty of cars of this caliber - having spent time at the Bentley and Lamborghini garages, and following different Instagram users who’s lives are dedicated to the upkeep of their cars, I'd grown a boy-like love for all things on four wheels. My current favourite is @Paddington_otwl , a guy named Tom Williams, who cares after his stunning 1976 Porsche 930 Turbo. The car is a thing of beauty, so if you’re a Porsche fan, head on over. But as I was saying, my appreciation is relatively fresh, so witnessing the amount of detail and passion put into each of these cars is breathtaking, and you can tell that each of the guys working there shares the same passion as the engineers that put the cars together.

After joking about which of the Wraiths I fancied, it was time to get suited for the event. For the evening I’d gone for an business event attire, comprised of a white shirt and blue/white polkadot tie from Next (a brand I’ve been buying from for years, affordable and massively reliable clothing, whilst keeping up with trends), a charcoal checked blazer that I’ve actually had for years that I picked up at Burtons, but to this day fits perfectly and works with so much, accompanied with a dark tartan pocket square. I finished this outfit with my cream cropped slim-fit chinos from and brown suede loafers from Topman - a combo I will never get tired of, whether it's January or June. I topped it off with one of my favourite wristwatches, the Classic Glasgow watch from Daniel Wellington, which has a blue with white pinstripe fabric strap, an eggs shell white dial, with rose gold accents, case and links.

The guests, of which there were 120 expected, began to arrive just before 7pm, with the party in full swing by 7:30. With TJ Littlejohn’s Bar-in-a-Box on all things drinks, Appetite Direct circling the venue with gorgeous canapés, and Bleaker supplying the soundtrack for the evening, the stage was set for a massively successful event.

The evening flowed seamlessly, with a small break for formal proceedings - speeches from the General Manager of The Leven Car Company, and the Regional Director for Rolls Royce just to thank everyone for coming, the journey and partnership of Leven and Rolls, and a quick word on the rugby, wishing Scotland the best of luck against our rowdy neighbors. After which, more cocktails, mains canapés turned to dessert, and with photographer Ricky Baillie making his rounds, I concluded there were far more than 120 guests here. I sidestepped my way around the showroom, pausing every so often to shake hands and be introduced to new faces, whilst laughing and saying hello to old ones, and managed to quickly ascertain that over 150 people had made their way down to Corstporphine for the event.

As the evening began to wind down around 10pm, there was to be an afterparty at the Epicurean bar in the G&V Hotel in the centre of town - a recently refurbished cocktail bar within the hotel, taking Edinburgh to new levels of cocktail mastery and creation. Sadly, I had to head home after the event, but the buzz that I got from departing guests was that the night had gone incredibly well, and they’ll be sure to attend more Of One Mind events in the future.

A huge congratulations to Nicola for organising another top class event, which was a great success for everyone involved. I know that the Leven and Rolls guys have gotten back to her personally to say how much of a successful evening it was for them too. So Of One Mind’s 2017 is off to a fantastic start, with their next event to be held at the Lamborghini garage at the end of the month.

I think she might have more of a thing for cars than I do…

Here's a gallery of some other snaps that Ricky took from the night.