The Colours of Spring - Tanya and Liam's Doonbeg Wedding

Spring definitely sprang for Tanya and Liam's Doonbeg Wedding in April - with sunny skies and a bright springy palette of colour, Tanya put her professional hat and diy gloves on to create a beautiful celebration

For a wedding professional, planning your own wedding  is both the ultimate opportunity and challenge: it offers the opportunity to do everything you want to do to your taste (and not someone else's), and at the same time can be the most difficult challenge: trying to pare all of your ideas down, to create a celebration that really reflects you both as a couple, and isn't just faddy or fashionable. Today's gorgeous bride Tanya was in just such a quandary when it came to her wedding to handsome beau Liam, but as you'll see, she put all her creativity and skill into play and their wedding at the Lodge at Doonbeg was a triumph, captured beautifully by Christina Brosnan.

Tanya is a stationery designer, creating beautiful wedding invitation suites with her company Lots of Love invitations, so no surprise when it came to her nuptials with fiance Liam, that she had a whole host of ideas ready. Being a graphic designer it's no surprise that the stationery and printed goodies at the wedding were of tremendous importance to Tanya, and gave her the perfect opportunity to put her own stamp on proceedings "As a graphic designer I just couldn't help but create a wedding logo. I designed a combination of our initials in a crest of waves.  I used this throughout all of the stationery - menus, ceremony booklets, and place cards."  But the stationery wasn't the only aspect of the wedding Tanya's creativity, she put huge effort and care into creating a host of decorative elements from her bouquet to the sweet buffet, wedding favours to the cake. The result is a really lovely celebration combining elements of both their personalities and tastes, all with the very personal touch of being handmade by the bride...

But let's start at the beginning..."Liam and I first met about 7 years ago when we both worked for the same company. I was in the advertising department at the time and he was in Purchasing. We got to know each other over the next year or so at work. I remember in particular one day when I wasn’t feeling well in work and complaining about it, Liam offered a little box of chocolates, that he had gotten as a sample, to cheer me up. It was very sweet and I thought then he was one of the good ones. We eventually had our first date over dinner at the Heritage restaurant in Killenard over a year later. We have been through a lot together, me changing jobs a couple of times and then setting up my own business, family funerals, venturing into the property market, moving in together, and getting Lara our dog, the baby of the house. We are each other’s best friend and I couldn’t imagine my life without Liam in it."

So how did the proposal go? "Liam is always planning little surprises and presents so I didn’t think anything of it when he said we were going away for the weekend and the destination was a surprise. Eventually we drove into Dromoland Castle, Co. Clare for the weekend. It was a lovely surprise and a beautiful place. The next day Liam suggested we go for a walk before dinner. I wasn’t too impressed with this as it was cold and I had already dressed for dinner. Anyway Liam said we’d just have a short walk so out we went. The next thing I know he’s down on one knee in front of me at a beautiful lily pond on the grounds with a ring in his hand. I said Yes even before he finished asking me to marry him. I found out then that he had flown to Antwerp with his father to pick out the marquise diamond some months before and had it set in Dublin."

So fast forward a few months and a few miles, to the ceremony - held in St. Senan’s Church in Kilrush. Perfectly coiffed and looking supremely elegant in her Jenny Packham gown, on the arm of her handsome Dad (clad in his army dress uniform, how romantic) Tanya made her entrance...

For both Tanya and Liam, the ceremony presented the happiest moments of the day, for Liam "Seeing Tanya coming down the aisle and then the two of us being together again for the ceremony." While for Tanya it was "saying our vows to each other."

These are the most precious moments, the celebration is the fun stuff, but the ceremony is what matters most...

After saying their vows, the newlyweds headed off to Doonbeg for a few private moments with Christina Brosnan, who as always manages to blend into the background and allow the couple's natural happiness to shine and almost effortlessly captures their joy. But why Doonbeg as a reception location? Well it seems the couple have enjoyed many weekends away in Doonbeg over the last few years, and given it enjoys such a beautiful setting beside the sea what more could you want?

"We arranged a visit one weekend to meet with one of the wedding coordinators and have a look at the wedding marquee. When we met Sylvia she was so calm, organized and easy to deal with we immediately felt that this was the place for us." The perfect blank canvas for Tanya to add her decorative touches...

I tried to bring a spring feeling to the wedding with pastel colours, paper flowers and floaty dresses as we had decided to have an April wedding. Also as Doonbeg is a golf course beside the sea I brought some elements of water and waves into our wedding logo and used tones of powder blue and white in all of the accessories and stationery. We used printed golf tees and chocolate golf balls to reflect a little of the golf club venue. As Liam is also a keen golfer this was a personal touch from him.

I did quite a bit of DIY for the wedding as I really wanted to personalise everything. I created some giant paper flowers from tissue paper. They were free standing with clay bases. We hung our seating plan cards from them. We had a table with our family photos set up in frames so they would be a part of the day even though some have passed away. I also printed some Mad Libs wedding advice for everyone to fill in at the tables.

While the guests undoubtedly thought the sweet buffet was a treat for them, Tanya was actually making a special effort for her man - "I knew I just had to do a candy buffet table as Liam loves pick'n'mix so much. I sourced most of the jars in Ikea and printed the labels myself. I made the paper garland for the front from coloured card and ribbon. We provided all of Liam’s favourite sweets." Ah Tanya, you're spoiling him already!

And the DIY details didn't stop there, Tanya enlisted her Mum's help in creating the cake as a "joint venture" She made the actual cake; which was 5 tiers of fruitcake, carrot cake and lemon cake, while Tanya decorated the cake with tons of paper flowers -   tulips, peonies and freesia to tie in with the whole spring theme.

So having been on both sides of the bridal fence, and undertaken such a lot of work for your own wedding, we had to ask for some advice for brides and grooms planning their day? "Don’t take on too much, and plan early. Delegate, delegate, delegate!" Couldn't agree more!

Huge Congratulations to Tanya and Liam, 6 months on, we hope newlywed life is just as rosy as on your wedding day. If you like Tanya's work on her own wedding, then check out lotsofloveinvitations.ie  for more of her work.

And to Christina Brosnan, of course, for sharing her beautiful work with us, if you like Tanya and Liam's style be sure and check out brosnanphotographic.com

All the Wedding Details

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