To round off the week we've got a real wedding that will please all you girly girls out there - Sandie & Brian's summer wedding in Mount Falcon is a sweet serenade of pink and grey with a suffusion of vintage details. It's a symphony of femininity - but don't worry Brian got a few fun bits of his own. Just check out his groomsmen...

And Sandie & Brian asked one of the best in the biz - Eric Savoie to capture their day so of course the results are super-fab...

So the something blue is clear, but the rest of the tradition was completed with Sandie's beautiful accessories, with something old - her pearl necklace, worn every day and not to be lived without; something borrowed - this beautiful white gold and diamond dress watch belonging to Sandie's Nana, which she gave to Sandie's Mum as a gift; and something new, well there were too many to mention, but the most special I suspect was Brian's gift of a beautiful pearl and white gold bracelet.

Sandie was very clear from the outset about the kind of look & feel she wanted for their wedding day (wonder if Brian got a say 🙂  the colour palette was a mix of dove grey and blush pinks, and if Sandie were to sum up the "theme" "I would say "pretty lacy vintage" with a bit of travel thrown in. I am a big fan of all things old-fashioned so wanted to day to have a vintage feel, which really fit with the venue."

So how did this love story begin? "Brian and I were together for nine and a half years before we got engaged and we knew each other for 12. I guess we are pretty much childhood sweethearts — we were friends since our third year in secondary school and I think always had feeling for each other that we eventually acted upon the summer after our leaving cert when we got together. We have been together ever since and managed to get through my spending a year at University in France and moving to London for two years with him being in Dublin. In some ways, I think that was the key — we made sure that we didn’t make too many sacrifices for our relationship early on, did what we wanted to do, and we were lucky that we made it work and grew together."

And how did he pop the question? "I am not often short for words, and even after nine and a half years, Brian managed to completely  shock and surprise me by proposing on Christmas day. He arrived at my parent’s house in Dublin on Christmas morning with my present, as was our annual tradition. But this year he wanted to break from tradition and open the presents just the two of us instead of with my family gathered around. I insisted that we should open presents in front of my family so dragged a poor, worried Brian to the living room where I opened my present to find a Christian Louboutin box. I was so excited at the prospect of getting Louboutin’s for Christmas that I was a little baffled when I opened the box to find a dirty runner of Brian’s in it — but low and behold, inside the runner was a beautiful ring that Brian had had made for me — with 9 stones in it — one for every year we had been together. He got down on one knee in front of my whole family and that was it — a very special Christmas."

Having had a similar discussion with a friend the other day, I think some of you might empathise with Sandie's story of choosing her beautiful Jenny Packham wedding dress: "I must say, I found the whole dress shopping experience very stressful — I am really into my clothes so there was lots of pressure to find the perfect, not too bridal, completely unique and totally “me” dress  and I only started shopping for it 6 months before the wedding. I thought I knew what I wanted and actually found a dress that pretty much fit the bill which I loved. When it came down to it, the Minerva with the beautiful tulle and lovely V neck shape won, based on the fact that I felt it fit more with the style of wedding we were after and I felt it would be easier to wear — a friend also said she felt it was really “me” having received a panicked email from me with the two dresses pictured. So I ordered it and spent pretty much the next 5 months loving it one day and not liking it at all the next. On the day though, I really, really loved it — it felt perfect for me and was so easy to wear and it got lots of compliments." Having not even found my dress yet, but looking at so many all day long, I completely empathise, but it's heartening to hear that the stress is really for nothing, Sandie needn't have worried, she looked beautiful...

The ceremony took place in the lovely surrounds of the church of St Thomas in Collow "a beautiful small church set up on
the hill by a lake" not far from the wedding venue, Mount Falcon.

From the church, the wedding party made their way to the reception at the lovely, secluded Mount Falcon Hotel, a venue we have featured a few times at this stage, it seems it's popular for a reason: "We really loved Mount Falcon the second we set foot into it — it’s a beautiful part of the world and has that big house rather than hotel feel but comes with amazing hotel service. We were really clear that we wanted a country venue that we could spend the whole weekend in and we didn’t want a big hotel — more something that felt like a big house for us to throw a party in. However, we were also conscious of lots of friends travelling from London and we wanted to try to have as many people stay in the venue as possible and make it easy enough to travel to from London — so quite a few requirements. The staff were amazing and a pleasure to deal with and most of our friends and family stayed in the lodges on the grounds which worked out brilliantly. I couldn’t have been happier — it's a truly special place and I feel so glad to have found it.

As the dress code was Black Tie everyone, including the groom and groomsmen were wearing tuxes, so a subtle touch to help them stand out was to have each wearing a soft dove-grey tie. And then to give them an edge, Brian bought gifts of different coloured Ray Bans, "which they had a lot of fun wearing for the photos and over the whole weekend of the wedding"

Yes, those are Sandie's second pair of shoes, she had the lovely blue Nicholas Kirkwood heels as a generous gift from her Mum, as her something blue, but wanted a pair of shoes to change into for dancing so got herself a pair of cream Melissa shoes by Vivienne Westwood "these really came in handy not just for dancing but for the photos as the ground was really wet from the morning's downpour and the blue shoes would have been destroyed so I slipped on the Melissa's, which being plastic are immune to being destroyed by wet, muddy grass"

Sandie's talented Aunt Trish Boylan made her special ruffled cake based on a picture Sandie found on a blog, a real labour of love, but very much appreciated by Sandie & Brian, and ties in perfectly with the overall look of the wedding. An important part of this look was down to the stationery - Sandie works in marketing, often on lots of design projects "so this was one area I wanted to be
just perfect. I found a small company called Artcadia who created our beautiful invitations. I was thrilled with them when they arrived in the post and had so many lovely texts when they arrived in the letterboxes of my friends and family."

To add the vintage touch to the day, Sandie sourced a beautiful old vintage trunk from ebay and set it up on a table with pictures of their grandparents’ and parents’ weddings. She also found a doily for each place setting, unsurprisingly "this was a pretty painful process. 140 doilies took me quite a few months to source, but I loved how they looked on the tables and especially that each one was different, there was also lots of doily bunting around the place and little other bits and pieces to carry the lace theme through. We also used luggage labels for placecards becauses we are spending six months travelling the world for our honeymoon so I also set up a globe on the table too, to show where we were off to."

While this first dance looks serene and romantic, I'm pretty sure the dancefloor filled up very quickly and a great night was had by all because Sandie & Brian had an original take on what would be good for wedding favours for their guests "We made up “morning after packs” and had them put in every room in the hotel and in the lodges. Each pack contained Anadin, Berocca, a mini Green and Blacks chocolate bar and a Nature Valley Cereal Bar. We popped all of these into manilla boxes and tied them with ribbon (I have to admit tying the ribbons on 60 boxes was a pretty painful experience the day before the wedding) and put a little tag on. All the guest definitely used the contents of the packs and said they were a life saver."

So what words of wisdom have you got based on your own wedding? "I probably thought I was going to be able to control more on the day and therefore didn’t talk to the bridal party about things that were important to me that they perhaps could have helped to make happen. You forget that when you’re getting ready, you will be sitting still for a couple of hours, so can’t make sure that the photographer is taking photos of all the little details you want like the stationary etc. So my advice would be to make sure you verbalise some of the things you definitely want to happen on the day (people signing the guestbook, the photos you want etc) and ask your nearest and dearest to make sure that it happens. Otherwise — just enjoy it."

And your favourite moments of the day?

There are so many its really hard to choose! I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the speeches — each and every speech was very entertaining and they had me both laughing and crying — with little bits of shouting in between. It was so special to sit there listening to our closest family and friends saying such lovely things about us (as well as few interesting anecdotes) and I don’t think I expected to enjoy them so much.

I am also so glad we got a photobooth for our wedding. It was definitely one of the best decisions we made — everyone had so much fun in it and looking through the guestbook the next day where people had put there photos and messages was one of my favourite parts of the weekend and it was great to have something so instantly. I had some great moments in there late in the night with some of my friends and will treasure those photos forever.

Huge thanks to Sandie & Brian for sharing their day with us - hope you're having an amazing time on your travels!

And super thanks to Eric Savoie also, of course, for letting us show you his lovely photographs of their special day - Eric has lots more goodies over on Savo.ie to drool over - highly recommend checking it out...

All the Wedding Details

Ceremony: Church of St Thomas, Collow, Co. Mayo | Reception: Mount Falcon Hotel | Wedding Dress: Minerva by Jenny Packham | Accessories: Headpiece: Jenny Packham | Bracelet: Nuria at NJ Jewellery | Back necklace: Debbie Graham | Shoes: Nicholas Kirkwood & Vivienne Westwood| Bridesmaids Dresses: Jim Hejlm from Anne Gregory Design | Flowers: Perfect Details | Groom's Suit: Ted Baker | Ties: TM Lewin |Makeup: Touch Perfect | Cake: Trish Boylan | Cars: U2R1 wedding cars, Mayo | Stationery: Artcadia

 Check out Savo Photography in our Wedding Book of fabulous suppliers