The Jutagirs’ Scottish wedding rewards Barbadian strays

Jevan Jutagir, founder and owner of Red Advertising & Marketing, recently wed Danielle St-Pierre in a Scottish wedding ceremony at King’s College Chapel in Aberdeen, Scotland. The wedding was attended by many from Barbados, Trinidad and Canada, the bride’s birthplace.

The chapel dates from 1498 AD and is the multifaith chapel for the University of Aberdeen, where Jutagir attended university and was student union president.

Apart from the Scottish kilts that many of the men, including the groom and his groomsmen, wore, what also was unusual about this wedding was that the happy couple requested that the guests not bring gifts but, instead, donate to two animal charities in Barbados.

This netted extremely generous contributions amounting to $15 000, all of which was donated to both Ocean Acres Animal Sanctuary and Safe Cats of Barbados.

Jutagir commented on the donations, “Danielle and I are very lucky, not only to have found each other, but also to be able to live a comfortable life with access to most of the things we need.

Hence, we decided that, while our guests would have liked to shower us in wedding gifts, it was far better to harness their extreme generosity towards something we care deeply about…animal welfare and the rescuing and rehoming of stray or unwanted dogs and cats in our adoptive home of Barbados.

Our guests opened their hearts….and their wallets…and we were delighted to be able to give generous donations to Ocean Acres and Safe Cats of Barbados, both of whom are doing a wonderful, but often thankless job, saving the unwanted dogs and cats of Barbados.”

Danielle, the newly wed Mrs Jutagir, added to his comments, “Both Jevan and I are deeply committed to animals and fully enjoy our cats, our tortoises, our humming birds, our ramiers, and even our monkeys in our garden home in Barbados.

However, we are also very aware of a growing problem of unwanted pets and unchecked breeding in Barbados and always try to help where we can…through personally rescuing animals in need and even to the extent of taking a small dog with us to Canada to a new adoptive home there.

Due to this, we met Karen of Ocean Acres and Barbara and Wendy of Safe Cats and were delighted to turn our wedding guests’ generosity towards these two very worthy registered animal welfare charities. We hope others will be inspired to also find creative ways to help animals in need, particularly through these two hard-working and effective charities, and to give to other charitable causes as well. We know that there are many other competing and equally worthy charities in Barbados, as we support many other charities either through Jevan’s advertising agency, Red, or personally.

These particular donations are a wonderful start to married life together. Thank you to our wedding guests for making this possible!” (PR)