Lunch @ Bunnyconnellan

J surprised me last weekend with a lunch booking at Bunnyconnellans, in Myrtleville, Cork.

I love surprises, especially when they come complete with a scenic drive, food and beautiful views!

Bunnyconnellans - pic from their website

It was a bit overcast while we were there, but the view from our table was still amazing:

The food (below) was good - but it came out 5 minutes after we had ordered, which seemed a bit too quick..(microwaved?)

Spinach and ricotta pasta

Aww!

This little cottage was in the parking lot. It's probably just their storage shed or bin room, but it looked so cute I had to photograph it:

 And one last shot of the views to finish off :)

Cake Wrecks

I've been in stitches the past couple of hours from reading CakeWrecks.com

I stumbled across it while looking up wedding cakes.

All from Cakewrecks.com

The commentary that goes along with the 'wrecks' is just hilarious. Love it!

Venue: booked!

...well, provisionally booked at least.

After the wedding venue dilemma post, we went back to Waterford Castle to attend their wedding fair.

It was good to see the castle again - it was pouring rain outside, and the castle still managed to look fantastic. The interior was lovely too, and we got to see the presidential (bridal) suite, which we missed out on last visit. This suite is HUGE - I could definitely imagine myself getting ready for the wedding there.

If you remember from my previous post, the biggest concern we had with Waterford Castle was the bar being in a separate room. Seeing this bar room again only highlighted how big of an issue it was for us - the room is quite big, and full of comfortable chairs and sofas.. I could definitely imagine half the guests opting to sit in there for the night instead of the main reception room - and splitting the wedding guests is NOT what I want to happen on the night.

But - After a quick chat with the wedding coordinator - the problem was solved! for a small fee (approx 300 Euro) they will set up a temporary bar in the conservatory connecting to the main reception room. This means we will have to chop our guest list by 20 to make space for the bar, but that will only reduce the costs further, which is great.

So, based on that, we ended up (provisionally) booking what seems to be the perfect venue!!

View of the Castle - it's on its own island. Guests will need to catch a short ferry across.

Waterford Castle Entrance hall

Reception/Dining room

Wedding venue dilemma

Wow, it's been a while..things have been absolutely hectic here for the past couple of months. But enough excuses, time for a new post.

Besides a few other major issues going on, hunting for a wedding venue has taken up quite a bit of our weekends. Originally we had decided that the end of October was our deadline to book a place, but this has now been extended to the end of November, because we are no closer to deciding!

No venue we have looked at so far has been perfect - they each have their pros and cons. The two front runners are:

Waterford Castle

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This castle is beautiful, it's on its own island with ferry to bring guests across. The castle has been very well maintained to a 4 star hotel status without losing its 'castley' charm. There's a lovely dining room for dinner with a connecting conservatory. There's 19 rooms in the castle, plus lodges on the island giving more than enough accommodation for guests.

Hesitations: The bar is in a separate room to the dining/reception room - I'm worried that this will split the guests. Also, we would have to ensure all rooms in the castle were taken for the night of the wedding - however the castle rooms are twice as expensive as the lodges (and the lodges are of VERY good quality), so we're worried the guests will all choose the lodges, leaving us to foot the bill for the castle!

Castle Leslie

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Again another beautiful venue. The grounds are amazing, and the castle rooms are unique (shower in a life sized doll house anyone?). While the house doesn't look like a 'fairytale' castle, the inside has been well maintained - and has beautiful views of the lake.

Hesitations: The castle is amazing - but the reception for our numbers would be out in a 'semi-permanent' marquee attached to the castle! If we go with a castle venue, I'd prefer to have the reception within the actual castle..

Two other potentials we're hoping to fit in viewings of sometime over the next few weekends:

Kinnitty Castle

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A traditional 'haunted' castle - they have great wedding packages, but I'm unsure about the reception room - the photos seem a bit dark.

Village at Lyons

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This venue is a bit different in that it's not a castle - but the photos look amazing, so I'd like to check it out. I am worried though as the reception room is split level with the bar being on the top floor (see Waterford Castle hesitation).

So - that's where we are with selecting a venue. I didn't expect it to be so difficult! We've been searching for almost three months now...did anyone else find it difficult to select a venue?

Engagement ring cleaning at home

My engagement ring needed a clean, so I read through this vogue forum thread to see how other girls look after their rings at home.

First up - a close up of my dirty diamond - see all the specks!

I soaked it in a little tub of detergent and warm water for about 15 mins:

Then scrubbed it with a soft toothbrush, rinsed it in cold water (after putting the plug in the sink first!), then poured a little vodka over the diamond.. (apparently this gets rid of any left over soap residue??)

Finally, I dried it using a hairdryer.

The result:

No more specks!

And extra sparkle!

I'm not too sure how often I should be cleaning it.. I'm worried about dislodging the small diamonds down the side. I'm also not too convinced about using vodka - I can think of better uses for alcohol!

Wedding Crest

I'd love to have a wedding crest to use across all our wedding stationary. 

I'm planning to design it myself - at the moment I have this:

Luckily both J and my surnames begin with F, making the design easier to work with (and I'll be taking on J's surname anyway).

I think it's a bit too simple at the moment, definitely needs a lot more work.

Some beautiful wedding crests I've come across:

crest from here

crest from here

crest from here

crest from here

Let the planning begin...

We've decided that we'll get married in the Irish summer, 2013 and that we'll have roughly 120 guests.

That's about all we've decided on so far.

I'm determined to be an organised bride-to-be, so I went out and bought myself a wedding planner:

I chose it because it's a binder, so I can easily add plastic sleeves and paper under the relevant tabs:

The only downside is that the planner is HUGE, and kinda heavy - and that's before I even start filling it with paper, plans and pictures.

I'm also worried people will think I'm a bridezilla if I lug this folder around with me, so I also purchased some simple notebooks to bring around with me to meet vendors.

As half the guests will be coming from Australia, we wanted to give as much notice as possible in regards to the wedding date - so we started looking at venues last weekend.

I thought I was super-organised, looking at venues 2 years before the wedding... turns out, the venue we looked at over the weekend was already booked out the first 2 weekends in June, and the first week in July 2013 - crazy!

This has gotten me a little stressed, so I'm eager to see a few more venues as soon as possible, so I can book in a June/July date before they're all taken! (so much for not being a bridezilla...)