4th of July Festival Wedding – First Look and Marquee Ceremony in Doolin , Ireland by MrsRedhead Photography
4th of July Festival Wedding in Ireland!
First Look and Marquee Ceremony in Doolin Hotel by MrsRedhead Photography.
There is a long list of things We loved about Laura & Jonathan’s wedding … First of all the festival feel to the whole day ! The location, details, flowers, decor, colors …
Most of all though We love just how chilled out and relaxed the day was. It really goes to show that weddings don’t have to be full of tradition if you don’t want them to be!
Their story
What most people don’t know is that two weeks after we became a couple, on a night out, Jon told Laura they would be spending the rest of their lives together and that he wanted to marry her. Laura laughed and told him to stop being so silly. I guess you could say, it was just one of those things we always knew.
We always said we wanted something small and intimate and something that represented us. We didn’t want a traditional ceremony or reception (which is very hard to find in Ireland).We were originally going to go abroad and do our own thing but when we looked into it, we realized there were a lot of people we wanted to be part of our day and didn’t want to do it without them. All we wanted was a big party with our friends and family from all over the world. We searched for alternative venues for months that would let us do a mix of an Irish and American wedding, finally we found Hotel Doolin and it all came together.
We had no idea about the theme until we met Louise from Grace Events. Once we started telling her a little bit about ourselves and our story, we came up with the travel theme and it just made sense. We have travelled and lived all over the world and being from different countries, it seemed like the obvious theme. We wanted an outdoor wedding but with it being Ireland we knew we would have to accept that it may not be possible so we brought the outdoors, indoors.
Our day went better than we could have ever imagined. It started off raining which meant we couldn’t do our first look on the Cliffs of Moher as we had originally planned but nothing could take away the moment we saw each other for the first time. It was magical. The day was absolutely perfect and truly was the happiest day of our lives.
Highlights of the day
Laura – Other than marrying Jon, it was having all the people I love from all over the world in one place for the first time ever. My best friend who I thought couldn’t come, flew in from Australia for four days and surprised me. I think the shock was on par with when Jon asked me to marry him ?
Jon – The highlight of my day was being in the presence of the people from every corner of the globe that make up our “family” and showing them all how much Laura and I really love each other. It was saying to Laura then and there that every hardship that we had endured in our relationship was all worth it for this moment; having my person by my side for life.
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- People always laugh when we are asked “how did you two meet?”, Laura’s response is always “do you want the long or short version?” meaning she will say we met on a bus in Poland, well between Poland and Hungary and Jonathan will tell you every tiny detail of where we were, who we were with and what we were doing. This is the forum for Jonathan’s version, as cheesy as it is 🙂
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- We were both studying abroad in Budapest, Hungary (Eastern Europe). We were on a group tour to Krakow (a delightful 8 hour bus ride) when Laura heard someone say “bro what are you going to do when everyone leaves?”. Straight away she piped up and said “are you staying for the year? me and you are going to be friends!.” (Little did we know 8 years later, we would be planning our wedding). We were two of maybe ten that were staying in Hungary for the whole year as everyone else only did one semester. We spent most of the bus journey chatting and Laura ended up inviting Jon to Ireland for Christmas. The whole weekend we chatted and from there we realised we had a lot of classes together, we thought we were just friends until one night at an Irish event, Jon handed Laura a drink and also a big kiss.
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- From that point, not only did we become best friends but we fell madly in love. Most people thought it was just an Erasmus fling, but we spent the year traveling around Eastern Europe and haven’t stopped since. It’s been a crazy adventure living and traveling all over the world, doing long distance, waiting on visas, saving every penny to travel to Ireland or America to see each other. We did back and forth for a while, and then Laura finally moved to America. When we got bored of that we took off for another year of traveling where Jon gave Laura the shock on her life in November 2015 and got down on one knee in New Zealand. It has been a whirlwind with many ups and downs with lots of adventure.
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- In 2015 we were living in Melbourne Australia. Around July, Jon had decided he was going to pop the question on our 7 year anniversary which was on November 13th, and he started hunting for an engagement ring.
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- Jon didn’t find one, so he spent the next 4 months making one! Every time Laura would go to work in the morning, Jon would go meet with a jeweler before heading to work in the evenings. Eventually Jon asked Laura if she wanted to spend their anniversary traveling around New Zealand and planned out a big trip that had us spending 4 days over our anniversary in Queenstown. Jon picked out a place at the top of the Remarkables Mountains, just outside Queenstown, and the day before met with the ranger department to figure out how to get up there; they told Jon it was impossible and that the track was closed. Jon didn’t accept this answer.
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- We spent the 13th hiking up the mountains (which Jon should have listened to the rangers about) and finally after many wrong turns and improvised paths reached the top of the mountains at a place called the Shadow Basin Outlook, which felt like it was the actual top of the world; one of the most beautiful places we had ever seen. We had a little picnic and some Champaign on top of the mountains and just as we were getting ready to head back down, Jon stopped Laura, got down on one knee and asked her to spend the rest of her life with him. She of course said yes, after about half an hour of crying and panicking, and we headed back down the mountain hand in hand to tell our family and friends around the world the exciting news.
Advice :
Enjoy every second of it, it’s your day, make it a celebration about you two not a show for everyone else. Pick suppliers you feel you can build a rapport with, everyone we worked with made us feel so comfortable and relaxed on the day. We felt like we were with friends who were there to support us. Take time to soak every thing up and take it all in. There are so many once in a lifetime moments, make sure to have those moments with the people you love because you will cherish them forever.
Photographer: Olga – Mrs Redhead Photography
Second shooter : Aleksandra Skibniewska
Venue: Hotel Doolin
Dress: Sans Souci Malahide Co Dublin
Bridesmaids dress: Cari’s Closet Malahide Co Dublin
Grooms wear: Louis Copeland Dublin
Groomsmen: Patrick Bourke Menswear Ennis
Cake: Hotel Doolin
Flowers: West Clare Flowers
DJ/band/other entertainment: Bentley Boys
Hair: Mimis Enistyimon
Makeup: Aoife Garrihy Ennistymon
Rings: Paul Sullivan Waterford
Honeymoon: Croatia, Austria and Budapest (back to where we first met)
4th of July Festival Wedding – First Look and Marquee Ceremony in Doolin , Ireland by MrsRedhead Photography