While we genuinely love and admire every wedding we feature on One Fab Day, you know yourself, as with everything, sometimes something about a particular couple or wedding really strikes a chord and hits me straight in the heart, and I feel a particular connection with the couple and celebration. Today is just such a day - Anne Marie and Iain's Roscommon wedding is a delight from start to finish mainly because you know everything is heartfelt and personal.
Iain is from Cumbria in the North of England, his family is Scottish and English and Anne Marie is from Castlerea, Co. Roscommon. Though living in London, they wanted to celebrate near Anne Marie's family home in Roscommon, so they set about combining their respective artistic skills as an Architect and Interior Designer, and roping in friends and family to create a uniquely beautiful and intimate wedding that reflected them both perfectly.
So how did the love story start? "We met through mutual friends in a pub in London Bridge about 8 years ago. We are both designers so would bump into each other over the years at work events but were a bit too shy to talk to each other. Eventually our mutual friends got married and we met again in the hotel lift — both running very late for the wedding ceremony! Seeking refuge after the dinner from an amorous cousin of the bride, I struck up a conversation with a now quite tipsy Iain. That was over 4 years ago and we have been together since then...
For me a great car is a real star at a wedding, and this Morris Minor is an undoubted star of Anne Marie and Iain's day. Anne Marie's dad's friend John Murphy drove us to the church in his gorgous Morris Minor. His wife Lily even packed a hamper with champagne for after the ceremony! What a lovely touch...
But forget about the car for a second, let's get back to the story - what about the proposal? "Iain planned to propose in Edinburgh when we were there for the Fringe Festival. I managed to thwart a whole weekend's worth of effort on his part to find a romantic locations to propose (refusing to climb up to Arthur's Seat because I wasnt wearing the right shoes; turning my nose up at visiting the castle because you had to pay in; taking him to a play about marriage break up... etc, etc!) Eventually he seized the oppertunity on our last day there, while we were having lunch in a little French cafe on Grassmarket. I was so shocked I couldn't finish my mussels and chips! It was a really sweet place and somewhere we can always go back to, so I'm delighted that was where he finally proposed. I took a photo of the the creme brulee we shared afterwards (the shock didn't stop me missing dessert!!) and used it as part of the wedding invite."
The ceremony took place in St Bride's Church, Ballintubber just up the road from Anne Marie's family home. And here's a new piece of advice from Anne Marie I hadn't heard before, "We would also highly recomend asking guests not to take photos in the church. It can be really distracting and it's easy to share your profesional photos with people after if you want to. We were really glad we did this." Not sure how guests will feel about it, but think I might try it might myself.
The local choir leader Joe Healy and his daughter Aoife did an amazing job on the music in the church for the ceremony. They both have really distinctive voices and played songs that meant a lots to us rather that the more traditional wedding songs, including Iains favourite 'if i was a carpenter'. We were so lucky to have such local talent available for the day.
A special bualadh bos (Iain, Anne Marie will translate for you) has to go to this groom - we've been on about groom style for a long time now, but this lad Iain, he is in a league of his own. Iain - we OneFabDay ladies salute you!
This has to be one of my favourite wedding pictures in a long time, and one you would only get in Ireland...
Driving to the venue after the ceremony in the Morris Minor — a mixture of relief, anticipation and happiness.... plus it was warm and we had champaigne!!
"We really wanted somewhere private & relaxed, that we could have to ourselves for the whole weekend. We found exactly what we wanted right on our doorstep! Clonalis is a beautiful country estate on the edge of the Castlerea town. The owner Marguerite has renovated the old stables and steward's houses into lovely self catering cottages. They had never held a non-family wedding on the grounds but were really excited about our idea of having a marquee in the walled garden. Marguerite and her family were so helpful and friendly in the run up to the wedding and were there to make sure everything went smoothly on the day."
If we love Iain's groom style, we adore Anne Marie's bridal style - eschewing the usual white ballgown and choosing a chic shift dress, she looks comfortable, elegant, and herself! Who says short wedding dresses are just for city weddings?
While the bride and groom were off working the camera, the guests were content to wander the grounds of Clonalis House enjoying their drinks and sausage rolls (more about those later...) and listening to the strains of the local trad youth band that Anne Marie had organised as entertainment.
Quite the dapper guests at this wedding, including this little chapeen...
The marquee was hired from Carnival Marquees, for whom Anne Marie has lots of praise "Excellent service and very tolerant of our non standard requests!" with the caterhire Now the voice of experience, Anne Marie has some advice for those contemplating the marquee wedding option... "A marquee wedding can be a lot more work than going to a hotel as you have to plan everthing your self. Its worth it though if you want to do something quite personal. My advice would be to write tons of lists and to make sure you have pleanty of helpers lined up!!"
The cafe where Iain proposed had red and blue gingham table cloths with thistles in old Pernot Ricard bottles on the tables. We kind of took that as a starting point for how we wanted the wedding to look. Relaxed and colourful with a country feel that suited the location. We wanted tons of flowers everywhere and combined a mix of scottish thistles for Iain's family and Roscommon coloured blue and yellow spring flowers!
The flowers were really important to us — we wanted to have a real mix of spring flowers on all the tables so spent the months before the wedding collecting random bottles and jars from charity shops, pubs and recycling bins. It was quite a nice collection by the end so we decided to use paper luggage tags for name place settings and asked people to put their tag on the bottle they wanted to take home. Everyone got something different and we see familliar bottles popping up all over the place when we go over to friends houses now!
We both love making things so spent a lot of time in the months leading up to the wedding in arts and crafts mode! We made the invites, mass booklets, table cloths, wooden logs for table numbers, cake toppers, a shawl for my bridesmaid (sister Mairead) and black boards for the bar menu and place settings list. Iain spent the whole day before the wedding writing the black boards up neatly and having to paint over all the spelling mistakes and do it again (he is a terrible speller and from England, so the Irish names totally threw him!)
My dad Benny has a restaurant and bakery called Benny's Deli in Castlerea, so he very kindly offered to cater the wedding. The shop was shut early that day and all of the Benny's staff came and worked at the wedding. The food was fantastic and the staff did such an amazing job and were all out on the dance floor when the food was finished. My only regret was that I didn't get any of the sausage rolls that were served at the drinks reception — apparently they were so delicious they have now taken on some sort of legendary status among our friends and family!
After the food Aiden Kavanagh DJ'ed at the reception and played an amazing set. I couldnt recomend him highly enough. He spent time with us before the wedding going through the type of music we liked and on the night played a total mix of fantastic music — reading the crowd, so the dance floor was packed all night! Requests from the guests were pretty diverse, from Neil Diamond to House of Pain, but what ever he played it totally worked!
To be honest, organising the wedding we had from London would have been a nightmare with out all the help and support of our family and the local people in the area. All of the suppliers we used were fantastic and I would highly recomend any of them! We had so much help from our family too — My mum made the delicious cake and my sister was the worlds best bridesmaid spending two days in freezing cold weather and rain setting up the marquee. As did Iain's family who had come from Scotland and Cumbria — they thought they were coming to Ireland for a nice holiday when actually they were set to work for the first 3 days! As my dad said in his speech, the support we recieved over those few days was testament to the innateness of human kindness."
Huge thanks to Anne Marie and Iain for allowing us insight into their fabulous day, ladies and gentlemen, this is how doing it yourself is really done - with thought, care, vision, attention to detail and a lot of help from family and friends...
And of course huge Thanks to Paul Kelly the man behind the lens, for sharing these heartwarming images with us...
And leaving the last word to the bride Anne Marie about a certain Monsieur Paul Kelly who captured their fun and frolics... "Paul Kelly is a fantastic photographer. We were over the moon with the photos as they really capture the day. He is so nice to work with keeping things moving quickly, putting people at ease and capturing all the reactions and interactions while being really unobtrusive. I love the pictures of our guests during the wedding ceremony and during the speeches the best."
All the Wedding Details
- Ceremony: St Bride's Church, Ballintubber
- Reception: Clonalis House
- Photography: Paul Kelly Photography
- Wedding Dress: Pussywillow London
- Bridesmaids dresses: Whistles
- Shoes: Carvela
- Flowers: Calla Flowers, Strokestown
- Groom’s suit: Walker Slater London
- Hair band: Laura Hanlon Millinery 086 3442731
- Cake: Bennys Deli
- Cake Decoration: Bridies Bakery
- Make Up: Sharon McCormack
- Hair: Scissors Sisters, Roscommon Town (Laura) 090 6634409
- Wedding Bands: Mine — Stephen Einhorn London, Iain got his on Amazon!
- DJ: Aidan Kavanagh
- Catering: Bennys Deli, Castlerea
- Marquee: Carnival Marquees
- Cater hire: All Affairs