This City Love - Amy and Shane's City Hall Wedding by Katie Farrell
Today's wedding is a beautiful example of a relaxed but oh-so-elegant city wedding. Amy and Shane chose the incredible backdrop of Dublin City Hall for their ceremony, and then moved on to an intimate dinner for their thirty guests at the Cliff Townhouse just down the road. In between, Katie Farrell snapped a range of […]
Today's wedding is a beautiful example of a relaxed but oh-so-elegant city wedding. Amy and Shane chose the incredible backdrop of Dublin City Hall for their ceremony, and then moved on to an intimate dinner for their thirty guests at the Cliff Townhouse just down the road. In between, Katie Farrell snapped a range of wonderful images of the couple enjoying their home city, from the grounds of Dublin Castle to the Iveagh Gardens and bustling Temple Bar. A true city experience all around! Let's take a peek!
First, tell us how you two met. "Weirdly enough, my first meeting with Shane was when he auditioned me for a part in a television pilot that he and a group of friends from college were making. I got the part, however I think it was probably because he fancied me as my audition was fairly terrible!. We became quite close friends after that. I think we both knew we liked each other but were incredibly nervous about broaching the subject. It wasn’t until my birthday about 6 months later in March 2004 that he mustered up the courage to tell me he liked me. We’ve been very happily together ever since
The bride's makeup was by Tara Make-up, and the bride's mum convinced her to nip across the street on the day of the wedding to have her hair done at Blow. Nothing like a little last-minute blow-out for an extra special day!
Shane put a lot of thought and time into the proposal, using his artistic skills to wow his future bride. "Despite being together for 8 years, I didn’t see the proposal coming. We had decided to go away for a weekend at the start of 2012, which we both kept having to postpone due to work commitments. We eventually got away to the beautiful Bellinter House on April 1st. Shane had been planning to propose that night (it would have seemed quite fitting for us to get engaged on April Fools Day!) but I ended up getting a really bad tummy bug and completely scuppered his plans of a romantic moonlight stroll."
Nothing like a little last minute liquid courage, eh Shane?
"The next morning after breakfast, and feeling a million times better, he asked me if I wanted to have a look in the Library Room in Bellinter. We sat down and he handed me a beautifully wrapped package, saying it was a belated birthday gift. I opened it and inside found a pop up book, which Shane had painstaking cut out and put together. It was all about our life as a couple. It had pictures of our family, our friends; even a cut out of the flat we live in. When I opened the last page, a giant paper ring popped out. I was in such shock that I had a mini panic attack. After I stopped crying, calmed down and got my breathing somewhat back to normal, I mumbled a “Yes” which Shane unfortunately mistook for an “I guess.”" What a special proposal!
City Hall is a beautiful location for a wedding ceremony. The rotunda is such a grand space, it really adds the necessary gravitas to such a serious occasion, but is so elegant as a room too. Not many people know that you can have a wedding there, so how did Amy and Shane make the choice? "We’re both from Dublin and really liked the idea of having our day in our city. After going to City Hall one Thursday afternoon in October, we both knew that it was where we wanted to have out ceremony." What a wonderful and iconic choice for two city-slickers...
It's not always easy to have an intimate wedding, but Amy and Shane managed to pull it off without a hitch. "We both knew that we wanted something very simple; a day as relaxing for us and our guests as it could possibly be. We had originally talked about a big wedding, but we eventually decided on a much smaller and intimate affair. We ended up with 30 guests. It can be a difficult decision to limit the number of people at your wedding, but I think we both felt that we would be most comfortable with our immediate families and a handful of friends each. It was also important to capture the image of the day in the way we wanted. Katie Farrell gave us just that, a mixture of sublime candid snaps and wonderful family portraits."
"Not a huge amount of planning went into a particular look or theme for the day. Personally, I wanted Shane’s input to be equal to mine in terms of what we chose for the day. Almost all the decisions were made together. We decided that City Hall, in all its grandeur, didn’t need any additional ornamentation."
Amy and Shane wanted their nieces and nephew to be involved in the wedding, so they made them "flower people!" The flower girls were sparkling in pale pink dresses from Next, and the flower boy was in a suit from Zara.
The couple added sweet details to make their ceremony extra special. "We decided upon a civil ceremony and added our own touches with music performed by our friend Ronan on guitar, our favourite poems read by friends and writing our own vows to one another." The couple's friend Ronan Yourell played “Everything I Own” by Bread as Amy walked up the aisle and “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys as the two walked down as husband and wife.
Don't you just love Amy's shoes? The lipstick red heels are from Carvela in Brown Thomas. They add such a bright pop of color! Perfect for the shorter wedding dress.
Ah Shane, you can't blame the nerves now! Well, maybe... still have to get through the speeches...
Amy and Shane bucked tradition and let their guests choose how to spend their time while they took these fabulous candid shots around Dublin city. "Aside from the ceremony and dinner times, we had no major structure to the day. After the ceremony, some people went to the Cliff Town House for champagne and others took a pit stop across the road in Brogan’s for a pint. It was nice to be able to take things at our ease." How relaxed for everyone!
The couple created a day that was just to their liking. Here's Amy's advice for doing the same for your big day. "It might sound a bit obvious but be as present as you can be during the day. At times I found myself racing ahead in my mind so I tried to stop every so often and soak it all up. Even if things go wrong, and one or two most certainly will, remember what really matters is that you are marrying the best person in the world. Shane and myself put the wedding together in about four and a half months and fairly evenly split the planning responsibilities. Don’t let anybody put pressure on you to do anything you don’t want to do." Well said, Amy!
While the guests were free to wander round town, the prospect of dining in The Cliff Townhouse (one of our 100 Best Wedding Venues 2013) was enough to ensure everyone was going to be on time for part 2 of the celebrations... "We were both really keen to have the reception venue close to City Hall. A friend had her reception in The Cliff Townhouse and after seeing her pictures, we knew that was where we wanted to have ours. I wanted somewhere I was sure the food would be amazing. We booked the smaller private dining room upstairs and it was just wonderful. The staff catered to our every need and the food was fantastic. Both of our families stayed in The Cliff Townhouse too, so the celebrating went on until the not so early hours of the next morning."
Amy and Shane carried their relaxed theme throughout the reception, "Our guilty pleasure is karaoke, so we opted for a Spotify playlist for the dinner and initial dancing and then at midnight, we let the guests take over with some classic and not so classic 90’s tunes."
Simple flower arrangements from Appasionata Flowers topped the tables in the small private dining room in the Cliff Townhouse. "Our tables were decorated with cherry blossom branches and named after our favourite family sitcoms from when we were growing up."
After the wedding day, the couple spent the rest of the weekend with their families, then headed off to Rome for four days. "It was a wonderful little getaway. We strolled and ate our way through the beautiful city."
Congratulations and best wishes, Amy and Shane! And huge thanks to Katie Farrell for sharing her beautiful work on this fabulous city wedding with us! We're delighted to announce that Katie Farrell has just joined One Fab Day as one of our fab sponsors! So you know she's got the OFD seal of approval and today's gorgeous wedding shows why... www.katiefarrellphotography.com
