Lydia & Colin

With a venue with an outside space called the 'Moon Garden', the fabulous The Lou's behind the lens and fashion from our very own Look Book members Suzanne Neville and Twobirds bridesmaid you know the wedding is going to be epic. Drenagh Estate in Northern Ireland most definitely does not disappoint creating many a dreamy backdrop for The Lou's to work their magic, but it isn't hard when you have such beautiful subjects. The getting ready portraits of the bridal party alone are full or tears, joy and heart wrenching moments, let alone all the captures of the gorgeous ceremony, blush and gold decor and blooms, and last but no means least the incredibly dreamy portraits of the loved up couple themselves. Make sure you are sitting comfortably because this wedding is definitely one you'll want to savour. Enjoy.

Dress

Lydia The Bride: I went to a few dress shops in London and once I tried a Suzanne Neville dress on, I knew the fit and feel were perfect. I loved elements from a few of her dresses, and luckily she does a bespoke service. My dress was based on Scarlett, and just had a few tweaks to the skirt and sleeves. I absolutely loved it!

The Grooms Fashion

Colin and the boys’ suits were Herbie Frogg. I think once he saw they were the official suit for the Northern Ireland football team, he was sold! His shoes were also Herbie Frogg, and his dicky bow, and boys’ ties were Liberty from Mrs Bow Tie.

The Venue

We fell in love with Drenagh the first time we visited it, and knew it was the place we wanted to have our wedding. Joanne was super lovely and helpful with organising the practical elements of the day. Even though we live in London, correspondence via email and phone calls was really straight forward. The only thing we had to worry about was the weather...and even that went our way!

Colour Scheme/Decor

Although it was an Autumn wedding, I didn’t really want to go with a typical Autumnal colour scheme. So we went for blush and metallics. I would say don’t feel tied to the ‘colour of the season’, just do your own thing and pick the colours you think suit you and your day best.

Flowers

Our friend Sarah did a wonderful job of the flowers. I went to her with some ideas and she knew exactly what I wanted! I got some vases and tea light holders for the centrepieces and Sarah put them all together with the flowers beautifully.

The Wedding Party Fashion

As we were living in London and my bridesmaids were quite spread out geographically, (one was living in Doha!) I had heard about Twobirds bridesmaid dresses and thought they would solve all my problems because they would only need to be taken up. We had lots of fun tying the dresses in different ways..and still hadn’t decided who would wear their dress which way until the night before the wedding!

Ceremony

The ceremony was so special to us. We got married outdoors in the Moon Garden at Drenagh Estate. It is quite hard to describe – the photos do a much better job than me. We were so lucky with the weather on the day - the sun was shining and birds were singing. It could have been a summer’s day! Two of our friends played guitar and keys, and we had some bible passage readings which were special to us, read by our siblings.

Entertainment

Friends played music during the ceremony, Colin’s friend is in a wedding band, so he and one other from the band did an awesome acoustic set for us during the afternoon drinks reception. In the evening, we had The Gents for the party! We both love music so we wanted the entertainment to be a great factor on the day – it’s usually what most people seem to remember from weddings!

Food

Gillian at The Little Cupcakery NI made our delicious cakes. I really liked the idea of having a cake table with lots of different designs...I’m pretty indecisive and there were so may cake designs I loved, so it meant I didn’t have to choose just one! All the food was delicious, which is great because it’s definitely a memorable thing as far as Irish weddings go!

Photographer

Louie and Lou (The Lou's), were awesome. I had been following their insta for quite a while before we got engaged and always thought I would love them to photograph our wedding. Wedding photographs provide such a lasting memory of the day, and we’re so happy we had The Lou's to capture these memories for us - they couldn’t have done a more beautiful job. They made us feel so relaxed and are super fun to be around!

Videographer

We hadn’t originally considered having a wedding video, but after much recommendation from friends, we decided to and were so glad that we did. Heart & Heart Films did our wedding video and they were so good that most of our guests didn’t even realise we had a videographer...let alone two! I think that says a lot – these guys let you get on with your day and capture it all on film. They caught lots of wee moments that we didn’t even notice, and it’s also fun to see the day from a different perspective. Everyone says this, but the day really does fly by, so when we sat down to watch our videos it was so lovely to experience the day all over again.

Stationery

For our invites and stationery, we wanted something unique to us, and as we’re both from Ireland and living in London, we wanted a design to represent this. So our very talented friend Heather drew two sketches of the London skyline, and some favourite places in Northern Ireland and Donegal. Kerry at The White Letter was a delight to work with. I gave her a vague idea of what I would like for the invites (not even sure myself at that point), including the sketches from Heather, and she came up with the perfect design which then ran through the rest of the stationery’s theme too.

Website

One thing I would definitely recommend is having a wedding website – it makes life SO much easier! We used Riley & Grey – it was so easy to set up the website, there are so many great templates and it’s so easy to make it unique to you. The main reason we thought it was brilliant was because it has a function for your guests to log on and RSVP, and give their meal choice which is collated and can be exported into an excel document which made the admin side of things a dream!

Misc

We didn’t go to a single wedding fair – mainly because we weren’t in the country. So wedding blogs and recommendations were invaluable to us. The Lou's gave us a list of recommended suppliers so that helped us out loads. I would definitely recommend getting any talented family friends you have on board. Our friend Amy made the welcome sign, my dad made our wooden photo display, and Colin’s mum made the most yummy shortbread ever. On our wedding day we took 5 minutes to ourselves just to chat, drink prosecco, and process the fact that we were now married! I think this is really important as you’re surrounded by so many people all day and don’t get much of a chance to sit and chat to your new husband/wife. On the same note...try not to lose each other on the day (this is easier said than done!)

Special moments

Sparklers – this was SO fun! We had the sparklers just before the first dance and was super lovely to see everyone getting involved.