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 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...)

Engaged!!!!!

It's been a while since my last update - things have been quite hectic lately!

The most important update is - I'm engaged!!

J proposed last weekend at the Cliffs of Moher in county Clare.

Cliffs of Moher

He told me we were driving from Dublin to visit his family for the night, only for us to end up at the cliffs!

J had packed a picnic of strawberries, raspberries and cream:

After we had finished eating, I suggested we head off but J wanted to wait 'a few more minutes to enjoy the view' - what he was actually waiting for was for the crowds to go away! When there was a break in the tourists walking past us, J handed me a scroll to read while he got on one knee and proposed with my dream ring! I said 'yes' (of course) and there were a few tears - all happy ones!

The Ring

J and I had been looking at rings for a while, and earlier this year we found the most beautiful ring at Delphi Antiques in Dublin. Delphi also had the ring up on their website, so every few days I would jump on the website to see if it was still there. J was very busy with exams and work around this time, so I thought he would wait till things calmed down a little before buying the ring. 

As soon as I noticed the ring disappear off the jewellers website I called J over in a panic - he swore he didn't buy the ring, and that he would call the jewellers to see if it was really gone. The next day J said that he had spoken to the jewellers, and that someone had definitely put a deposit down on the ring and it was off the market.

That was three months ago, and during that time J had been suggesting we go ring shopping again and making other comments to put me off the trail. I honestly thought that the dream ring was gone and that when we had time again we would find something else. 

Because I knew J wanted to propose with a ring we had chosen together, I didn't suspect that he was going to propose that day at the cliffs - in fact, while we were sitting on the cliffs I was thinking "This would be the perfect time and place for a proposal - too bad he doesn't have a ring yet!"

It turned out J had bought the ring the week after we had viewed it. He had kept it at the jewellers for 3 months, and hid it around the house for the last week before the proposal. Very sneaky! I didn't have a clue!

Engagement Weekend

To top off the weekend, J booked a room at the Raddison in Galway. Because Galway was packed that weekend due to the Arts Festival, when we checked into the hotel, they put us in the penthouse suite!! (this was without knowing we had just gotten engaged!)

That afternoon we called J's family and told them the news, and waited for everyone to wake up in Sydney before calling to tell my family. My parents weren't surprised at all as J had called the day before to ask for my dad's blessing. 

And, the weather for the weekend was gorgeous - sunny and warm. All in all, the perfect weekend!