If your craving some blissful wedding beauty, you have arrived at the right place today! When Jenny and Mårten got married earlier this year on Rosbeg beach, the calm of the sea really did make this one utterly stylish, relaxed, not to mention fun wedding to be at! Not a tranquil moment was missed by This Modern Love, who captured their amazing and very personal day. Click through to see their day unfold!
Belfast born Jenny first met Mårten, a pilot originally from Sweden, in a small bar in Glasgow. At the time Jenny was at working as a doctor after attending University there, while Mårten was working for a Scottish airline.
With the relationship progressing, Jenny introduced Mårten to the joys of Rosbeg, Donegal, which was to become a a very special place for them both.
“My family have a caravan in Rosbeg and have been going to the same place for 30 years. It is a very special place for my family and Mårten now loves the place as much as we do. Unfortunately my dad passed away two years ago and Rosbeg was his favourite place. At the end of last summer it was just Mårten and me there. We went out for a walk in the rain and went across the headland to what is locally known as the Secret Beach. He asked me to go ahead to the shore so that he could take a picture of me and when I turned round he was down on one knee with a ring (not the real thing) and had written ‘Marry Me’ in the sand,” Jenny explains.
When the time came to plan their wedding, Jenny and Mårten had relocated to Sweden and Jenny was working as a GP and trying to learn Swedish, so wedding planning became a little tricky! The couple had chosen Rosbeg as their wedding location, and with the help of the locals their day came together beautifully.
“Getting married in such a small place meant most of the locals knew about the wedding and went out of their way to help. The first things I did was arrange the venue and then the ceremony. We had an outdoor ceremony through the Spiritualist Union of Ireland who were able to marry us legally outside so there was no need for a separate registry office wedding. We were able to fill the paperwork out by post from Sweden. They were so lovely and gave a beautiful ceremony that was completley personalised. Our photographer kindly traveled from Belfast and was superb; he really captured the atmosphere of the day and the beauty of Donegal. We organised hotels and cottages for our guests who were travelling from Sweden including a beautiful Victorian house and cottage in Ardara called ‘Gatsby House’ which we got ready at.”
Choosing a theme for the day was pretty easy; Jenny and Mårten looked to their countries’ traditions and their own personal interests.
“We wanted the day to be relaxed, so we planned cocktails on the beach before the ceremony for our guests. I gathered ideas from different websites, including Pinterest. I used jam jars for the cocktails which were served from pitchers that my friend had set up on old whiskey barrels. My very kind mother bought all the jars (sold as lemon curd) from a well known supermarket and cleaned them all before we decorated them with jute and name tags related to the tables. We chose different planes as table names and put pictures of the planes on the tables and we even used foam aeroplanes instead of confetti” explains Jenny.
Instead of a traditional wedding meal, Jenny and Mårten wanted to use local produce like fresh crab and salmon from the Bay. The couple placed Swedish Snaps on each table and sang traditional Swedish snaps songs and some Irish drinking songs between the speeches!
Like most weddings, a few mishaps on the day went blissfully unnoticed by the bride and groom ..
“The flowers didn’t turn up for the archway on the beach until all our guests had arrived and literally a few minutes before I got there! I didn’t know anything about this. The weather threatened heavy downpours throughout the ceremony, but with the number of Child of Pragues which various people had put out for us, it stayed off! Also, the top layer of cake fell in a heap on the table before the cutting, which everybody tried to hide from us. We laughed when we did see it!”
Advice for other couples:
“Decide on the type of wedding you want as a couple and have bits included that are part of who you both are as individuals. You don’t have to do what other people expect you to- mix it up a bit and have fun!”
