Ruby Shoes & Boys in Blue - Sarah and Gavin's Horetown House Wedding by Rubistyle

Spring sprang in Horetown House for Sarah and Gavin's lovely wedding. With a happy and fun palette of red and blue, this wedding is an inspiration in so many ways...

Planning a wedding in 2 1/2 months is no joke, but today's couple, Sarah and Gavin, make it look easy. Not only did they plan a beautifully stylish affair, complete with lots of little intricate details but they did it on a budget too! The secret is a combination of great taste, super organisation and an army of ready and willing helpers in their circle of family and friends. Oh, and the icing on the cake is getting fab photographer Amy of Rubistyle to capture every little bit. We know you're definitely going to be inspired by their lovely Springtime Horetown House wedding...

While both Gavin and Sarah are Irish this love story started not quite down the road..."Ethiopia is the last place you’d expect to meet, and fall in love with, an Irish red head! But that is were we met in the summer of 2010. We were both volunteering for a small Irish charity, called Youth Release. The charity aims to provide free education and sports facilities for street children in Dire Dawa, and we were both volunteering to work with the children there, as part of a summer school program.

At the time, I was living in Ireland, and Gavin was living in the Middle East, so a relationship was not an easy option. Nonetheless, on the night of the 2010 World Cup finals, Gavin asked me out, amid all the buzz and excitement of the frenzied football fans in the streets of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.

It wasn’t until Gavin’s next holiday home to Ireland that the date was actually possible, however, so we extended our first date into a whole weekend away. We went surfing in Tramore and had a night out in Dublin, stopping off in Powers Court Gardens for a walk along the way. By chance, our first date coincided with Ethiopian New Year, on the 11th of September, so we also went to an African restaurant in Dublin to celebrate the day.

After that first weekend together, we had to face the prospect of a long distant relationship, because, unfortunately, Gavin had to return to Qatar for work soon after. Long distance relationships can be frustrating, but we managed to make it work, through an unimaginable amount of skype hours and constant flights, meeting for any number of days we could manage.

Due to the long distance nature of our relationship, the proposal happened on foreign shores as well. Although, Gavin was able to move home in the summer of 2011, when we moved in together in Dublin, his time at home was short lived. Eventually, reality hit home. There was no work in Dublin, so Gavin would have to go abroad for work again; this time to Abu Dhabi. We had spent a wonderful few months living together so we found it very hard to say goodbye. To make it easier, I booked a flight over to Abu Dhabi at the earliest possible date. When I arrived in December, Gavin took me to a restaurant in the Emirates Palace, telling me it was a treat for my birthday. Little did I know, he had arranged to pop the question that night.

Gavin had been conspiring with the restaurant staff, to arrange for a romantic candlelit table to be placed on the beach, under the palm trees. As we ate dinner, Gavin waited for the nod from the restaurant staff, so that he could suggest that we go for a quick stroll on the grounds of the hotel. The stroll didn't go quite as smoothly as he had planned, however!

As Gavin was steering me towards the beach, he was looking for the private table where champagne and strawberries were awaiting us, as planned. Nerves got the better of him, unfortunately, and when he couldn't find his all important set-up he got panicked. So we walked and walked, up and down the beach, as lost as lambs. Eventually I guessed that something was up, so he got down on one knee, there and then, and presented a ring; all the while, jabbering on about the fact that there was supposed to be a table somewhere but he couldn’t find it. I, of course, said yes, table or no table!

Being based abroad Sarah and Gavin needed all the help they could get, and weren't disappointed, everyone rowed in, in ways big, and little... "It was very important to us to have our friends and family involved in every aspect of the wedding day. As we were planning our wedding on a budget, and within a very short space of time, it was an immeasurable help to have extra hands on board to make our dream day a reality. Most importantly, the individual contributions of our friends and family towards the day were what made the celebration so much more intimate, personal and special. In reality, this wedding was less of a D.I.Y. wedding, and more of a D.I.O. wedding (do it ourselves).

For example, on the morning before the wedding day, all the bridesmaids and groomsmen joined us on a nature walk to pick hundreds of petals from wild gorse bushes, which we then bagged up to use as confetti the next day at the church. We also put our friends and family to work decorating the venue. They helped with so many aspects (making bunting, cutting out signs, gluing little paper hearts, and planting flowers in decorative jam jars). Everything, from our beautiful frilly cake to our chunky wooden cake stand, was hand made by friends and loved ones. We have to thank everyone involved for their weeks of hard work and preparation." So by the time the wedding morning rolled around they definitely deserved this little drinky to celebrate...

Gentlemen readers, take a lesson from these lads - it's great to see the menfolk relaxing on front of the camera and giving it socks. The day is as much yours as it is the ladies' - these are keepsakes for you and your boys too!

Enough shenanigans, it's off to the chapel, someone needs to get married...

How fabulous does the bridal party look? Sarah sourced the bridesmaids' dresses in Debenhams (gotta love a high-street find) and her own beautiful short wedding dress comes from .... wait for it.... House of Fraser. See, budget doesn't mean compromising on the style.

The birdcage, the beautifully coiffed 40s-inspired upstyle, the red gerbera daisy, the pretty posy of red and blue - all combine to make Sarah a pin-up modern bride - fresh and fun. Indeed you may have spotted by now that there was a very distinct colour palette for the wedding: red and blue, which for Sarah were "bright, happy, contrasting colours".

We both feel very lucky to come from such a beautiful part of the world, which we appreciate more and more as we travel. When we are at home, we try to take advantage of the beautiful Irish countryside, as much as possible, by enjoying an outdoors life. The south of Ireland is particularly beautiful in April and May when the yellow fields of rapeseed burst into flower. We love these golden fields and miss them when we are living abroad, so for us it was very special to be able to take some pictures in a local field of rapeseed, thanks to a very kind neighbouring farmer. We are very happy with how the photographs turned out. The flowers were so bright and cheerful that they provided the perfect backdrop on your wedding day.

Perhaps it was the little unexpected things that our friends and family planned to surprise us. Although it was great to see our own plans come to fruition, it was far more special to see the work that others had put into the day that we weren’t expecting.

For example, as a surprise the best man hand carved a love swing for us, etching our names and the date of our wedding into the seat of the swing. He hung it from a tree on the grounds of Horetown house without us knowing. It was such a touching and thoughtful gesture that left us speechless. All day our guests enjoyed popping out to the swing to play and it created a great unexpected photo opportunity for our wedding album.

After discussing many options, we decided on Horetown House as the venue for our wedding. It offered us the homey feel of an intimate celebration, but also the space to cater for all our guests. We loved that it is a very versatile venue, which allows couples to add their own touches and make their day personal.

The venue has a lot of different spaces and we used all of them to keep our guests entertained from start to finish. For example, there is a little stone-walled pub in the basement of Horetown House, which was the perfect venue for a sing song into the wee hours of the morning. The house itself is very elegant and it provided a great space for receiving our guests before the meal. There was plenty of room for our jazz band to play and they got the wedding guests all up and dancing before the meal had even started! The marquee acted as a blank canvas where we could put up our own decorations and try to recreate that rustic barn feel that we loved so much. The event staff were very accommodating and were happy to provide us with a less formal dining experience.

Perhaps the best thing about Horetown House is that it has wonderful grounds. Earlier in the day we put these ground to good use, by providing lawn games for our guests, who enjoyed playing pitch-toss over a glass of champagne. Later in the night, after the speeches, we arranged for the doors of the marquee to fly open and outside a samba band were playing. We also booked a fire performer who lit up the night sky with a spectacular display. After a big meal, we think our guest really enjoyed kicking off their shoes and dancing under the stars to the pounding of drum music. They also had fun lighting up sparklers and toasting marshmallows around blazing braziers. It provided a real festival feel to the night and was a great way for everyone to let there hair down before the first dance. From that point on, the dance floor was packed all night!

When we were planning our wedding, we loved the idea of a simple rustic barn wedding, which is a style of wedding more frequently seen in the US than in Ireland. Ireland doesn’t have any Dutch Barns, unfortunately, so we aimed to incorporate an element of rustic charm into our day, by getting creative and using materials like wood, cork and hessian to decorate our venue.

Most importantly, we decided early on in the planning stages that we did not want to have a stuffy, formal occasion. We especially did not want silver service or fancy chair covers. Instead, every element we chose for the wedding was designed to make our guests feel relaxed and to help them have fun. Everything from the menu to the music was specifically chosen to create a joyful atmosphere. For example, our dinner was a gourmet barbeque. Big plates of wholesome food were put in the middle of each table for guest to pass around and share.

Stationery was a key element in tying the whole wedding look together and Sarah has a special word of thanks to her paper angel "the very talented, Mel Gardner, helped us to incorporate these colours into every printed element of the wedding. She designed wonderful wedding stationery, menus, bunting, table plans, table numbers, signs, you name it! We could not commend her work highly enough!

What advice would you give to brides and grooms planning their day? Our advice would be to talk about everything and involve each other as much as possible. If you work together, then the wedding day can be a true reflection of you both, as a couple. Also — we planned this entire wedding in 2 months and 29 days — so don’t panic, you can achieve an awful lot in a short space of time!

So all there is left to say is a mega Congratulations to Sarah and Gavin on what we hope is a blissful marriage.

And of course to Amy of Rubistyle we are very grateful for giving us her beautiful work to feature - it's a real treat to show such a lovely and original wedding. If you love Amy's work on Sarah and Gavin's day pop over to rubistyle.com and see more fab work...

All the Wedding Details

Loveseat Swing & Cake Stand: Hand Carved by Daniel O’Sullivan, Tree Surgeon Email: danielosull@hotmail.com

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