You never know how you'll meet the one you love...

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Jessica and Gearóid's Cliff at Lyons wedding is beautiful, but what really captured our attention is their one of a kind love story. Bride Jessica grew up in California, and only through an unexpected twist of fate ended up living in Dublin and falling in love with Gearóid. Kevin Morris captured all the wedding details, and today Jessica shares her and Gearoid's tear jerker of a love story...

Vintage Inspired Cliff at Lyons real wedding by Kevin Morris Photography // onefabday.com

Jessica begins... My mother was adopted from Ireland to America in 1960 to a family unable to bear children of their own, my grandparents. In 2006 my mother received a letter from The Irish Adoption Guild to advise that a woman in Donegal had been searching for her and they could confirm that the woman was her maternal sister. They further advised that the woman had written a letter to my mother and sought permission to forward it to her. We received the letter some weeks later and learned that my mother had 4 siblings in Ireland. It was the sibling’s father who disclosed the existence of their sister in America only hours after their mother passed. Their mother carried the secret of the daughter she gave up after becoming an unwed mother for all her life.

Jessica continues... From there, the eldest sought out to find my mother. It took her over ten years of trawling through adoption, orphanage, church and mother-baby home records to find my mother. But after much perseverance she found her and after receiving that letter in 2006 we continued communication with the whole family. My parents and I travelled to Ireland to meet my mother’s long lost family in 2007 and my love for Ireland was ignited. I was able to obtain an Irish passport and moved over in 2010. My always fabulous and totally mad aunt Liz who found my mother still takes credit for Gearóid and I meeting: “Where would you be if I hadn’t found your mammy? Ireland lost a daughter but gained a granddaughter thanks to me!

After finding each other and falling in love, Gearóid proposed and he and Jessica travelled to Antwerp to collect a bespoke engagement ring by jeweller Joe Katz. Jessica details... We flew to Antwerp in late September and made a weekend out of it. We called to Joe Katz’s studio in the diamond district to collect my ring which was an experience in itself; a bustling borough of Antwerp lined with jewellery shops, diamond importers and design studios. It was a fabulous weekend and I got to return home with my dream ring on my finger.

The Cliff at Lyons wedding was a joyous experience and a celebration of not only love but also the different journeys that brought Jessica and Gearóid together. Jessica tells us... I think the overarching theme of the day spanned the topics of our personal love story, the journeys that brought us together, not only our journeys but those of our families and the extreme gratitude we had to our families, wedding party and guests.

Every wedding detail was well thought through from choosing a venue close to Dublin so American guests wouldn't have a long commute, to Jessica and Gearóid's personalised vows and ceremony music - including a rendition of The Beatles “Blackbird” and Bill Wither’s Motown classic “Lovely Day,” and a divine cake table by Cat at The Cake Cuppery.

Making sure everyone felt loved and appreciated on the day was of huge importance to Jessica and Gearóid. They tell us... We did our best to express our gratitude to our guests throughout the day, from an open bar, endless “thank you’s” in our speeches, to personally penned “Thank You” messages printed on the back of the menus and eventually a fully funded BBQ the next day at the The Schoolhouse hotel and restaurant in Ballsbridge. We addressed both our parents and our friends and families in our thank you message on the back of the menus.

In keeping with all the bespoke elements of the day, Jessica wore a bespoke a champagne satin wedding dress with an ivory chiffon overlay and lace bodice, designed by Sarah Foy. So beautiful and perfectly suited to the style of the day.

Lastly, Jessica and Gearóird invested in a good band. Jessica recommends... A guest favourite was the band, Pink Champagne. After the crowd was sufficiently warmed up they recruited Gearóid and me to join them in a rendition of “All These Things That I’ve Done” by the Killers...they had us lash out the chorus “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” over and over with a build up that eventually led to literally every guest on the dance floor. At the end, when the crescendo hit, the entire crowd were jumping up and down to the anthem...Every last one of them, 70-year-old aunts and uncles, kids, parents, all of them!

Jessica's main piece of advice? Get a wedding website. She tells us... I would highly recommend pulling together a wedding website in order to give your guests all of the details of your big day celebrations. Wedding Wire was fab & free and allowed for: All info was in one place for our guests, which meant no additional costs for printing or posting info cards with invites. Once all email addresses of invitees were gathered I could send out a bulk email from the site in order to collect and track postal addresses In the invite I directed guests to the website to RSVP which cut costs again on invite printing and postage. I was surprised to find at most people RSVP-ed on the website, which allowed me to track all RSVP’s efficiently.

Huge congratulations to you both and thank you so much for sharing your wedding day and story with us all. A big thank you also goes to Kevin Morris for sharing his work with us. To see more from Kevin Morris visit kevinmorris.ie/blog