Jess and Pete love festivals, travelling and they were engaged in Mexico, so these things were what influenced their Irish wedding. They were married in October with an €8000 budget and lots of colourful ideas.
“We wanted a quirky Mexican fiesta weekend and called it Fiesta del Amor (festival of love),” said the bride. “We were inspired by all the places we have travelled and the festivals we have been to. We got engaged in Mexico at a music festival while in a hammock so that’s where the main inspiration came from. When you go to a festival there is always little quirky things to find everywhere like a treasure hunt and we wanted to bring this feeling into our day.”
Their ceremony was held outside and the way they walked down the aisle was really unique. “I decided that I didn’t want to walk down the aisle in front of everyone, we wanted it to always be about both of us”, she continued. “So instead, we did a ‘first look’ and then my dad walked me down while it was only Peter there. When we were both at the front together all our guest entered and we had a roaming band leading them so we could both could greet them. This was my favourite moment of the day because we kept it a surprise from our guests. No-one had a clue what was going on or that we were there waiting down there already.”
“We then had a humanist ceremony, which is a fairly new thing in Ireland. we wrote the whole thing from start to finish. We used readings by Paulo Coelho from The Alchemist and Scafolding by Seamus Heaney. It was important to us to make the whole ceremony personal and a celebration of our Australian and Irish families coming together. We finished by symbolising the roots of our marriage by planting a tree in the woods.”
The reception was held in a marquee at Kippure Estate in County Wicklow. “We made everything ourselves as I’m a very crafty person, it was great fun. I made the tassels for the roof, a DIY photo booth, the signs and all of the little bits in the woods. We had God’s Eyes hanging off the trees and a ribbon wall around a door.”
“It can be stressful having to talk to all the family and friends on the day so we tried to catch up with everyone before the wedding itself. We had dinner for everyone a few days before. On the day we didn’t feel anxious if we didn’t get to speak to everyone. We also made a pact that our wedding was ‘every man for himself’ so we could just focus on US and not stress if someone wasn’t having a good time or needed to be carried home because they were too drunk!”
