A bride has opened up about walking down the aisle after committing to a long distance relationship.
Liz O'Malley first met Andrew when she moved abroad to study in Australia. The original plan was for the couple to part amicably before she moved home to Ireland but they then decided to give long distance a try.
The couple spent 15 months apart until Andrew made the decision to join his girlfriend in Ireland in 2016. Their journey down the aisle was met with further obstacles as they got engaged just before Covid hit, putting a brake on their wedding plans.
READ MORE: Dublin bride reflects on big day after beautiful city centre wedding
However, it all worked out for the best and the couple eventually celebrated their big day in House on Leeson Street. Beautiful photos taken by photographer Ewa Figaszewska, creator of Weddings in Dublin, show Liz and Andrew enjoying their city centre wedding in style.
Liz always wanted a non-conventional wedding and went with a 'garden party' theme for guest attire. The couple decided to forgo a couple of traditions, such as a wedding cake, as they felt that people tend not to take a piece if there's already desert on the wedding menu.
Here is the bride's testimony about how the big day went.
Who is your partner and how did you meet?
Andrew and I met when I studied abroad for a year at the Australian National University in Canberra. Originally we had planned to break up when I came back to Ireland but we decided to stay together and do long distance instead.
We spent three years apart, and before he moved to Ireland in 2016 we’d gone 15 months without seeing each other in person.
Tell us about the proposal.
To be honest, the proposal wasn’t anything special. We knew we were planning on getting married because we’d discussed it when we’d decided to stay together. In 2019 we were both in the right place in our lives to move to the next phase, so we decided to get engaged at dinner on a trip to Belfast.
Tell us about your wedding.
I’m so happy with how the wedding turned out in the end, but it was a journey getting there. Our original wedding date was 28 May 2020 but by March we knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Luckily our wedding planner Martina was a lifesaver and was able to move our date with all the vendors twice, first to 2021 and then to 2022. We didn’t change much during the extra two years of planning except that we decided to move the wedding to a Sunday so we could book out all of House on Leeson Street instead of just the garden, and it gave us more time to save.
The main guiding thing for our wedding was the food. Andrew and I both love checking out new restaurants, cooking, and travel so that was important to both of us. When we narrowed down wedding venues, we did tastings to chose between them.
We got even luckier than we expected - during the Covid interim, House hired a new head chef, Neil Mulholland, who had previously worked at Peploe’s. The House team were fantastic, and we had a great selection of vegetarian, pescetarian, vegan, gluten free and meaty dishes so there was something for everyone.
I lost count of the number of people who said it was the best food they’d ever had at a wedding, which we were thrilled to hear. The other big compliment we got was on the speeches.
We also decided early on that we wanted a relatively non-traditional wedding. We got married two days before the wedding at the civil registrar’s office and wrote our own ceremony for the main event.
What was the best thing about the big day?
So many things. I was happy that it happened at all after waiting three years. I was happy so many people were able to come, including from Australia and other countries.
I was happy everyone seemed to be having a good time. We had a suggest dress theme of ‘garden party’ and people really went for it.
House looked amazing, the food tasted amazing, we danced the night away, the speeches were moving. We were thrilled with how everything turned out.
What was your dress like/the bridesmaids dresses like?
I think my dress can be best described as what a little girl would imagine a princess would wear. I bought the dress in an evening wear shop in Stephen’s Green and had it altered.
Honestly, I hated wedding dress shopping. It’s a great way to feel bad about yourself. Wedding dress sizes are two sizes bigger than your regular size, the numbers don’t go up that high (they assume you will lose weight, regardless of how much you currently weigh), and especially at some higher end places you feel like you have to impress them somehow, even though they’re asking you to spend thousands of euros.
For the bridesmaids, I got a colour chart based on my dress of pinks, purples and greys and let them choose their own. In the end it looked amazing and everyone could choose something that they loved and that suited them. One of my bridesmaids wore a suit.
What are your tips for other brides?
Early on Andrew and I narrowed down the things that were important to us, and dispensed with the things we didn’t care as much about, even if they were traditional.
For example, we didn’t have a wedding cake because we’d been to weddings where it had been forgotten about because everyone had already eaten desert.
We did get a wedding videographer which I’m really glad about, because it’s great having the speeches recorded, and it captures the energy of the day in a way that photos alone don’t.
If you have the money and the inclination, I would recommend getting a wedding planner. Andrew and I had both started new jobs when we got engaged and we didn’t think we would have the time to be able to make a good impression and plan the wedding we wanted at the same time.
Martina our wedding planner was invaluable in being able to recommend vendors and venues, including options we didn’t know were there like House. She was great when Covid hit and we had to readjust multiple times. She more than made up her fee in terms of savings we made.
Would you do anything differently?
Not really. The only thing that didn’t work was we had a photobooth that we didn’t advertise well enough so people didn’t realise it was there but that was a really minor thing.
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