Remember those glorious rich tones of autumn? We’re headed right back there this morning with the beautiful marriage of Joanna and Jon in Dublin by Tomasz Kornas.
After meeting at an event run by Boards.ie in 2005, the couple got engaged during a friends wedding a year later.
“The wine had been flowing at the wedding and the conversation came around to marriage. We were standing outside in a fairy light lit yard and Jon asked if I would marry him and I said yes. He says that it felt like if he asked at that moment he would get a positive response,” said Joanna.
The couple headed straight in to planning an autumn wedding with the help of their family and friends. Keeping in tone with the time of year plenty of rich tones and harvest of the season were used to decorate their ceremony and reception.
The couple held a Wiccan handfasting ceremony in Joanna’s parents back garden followed by a Church of Ireland ceremony in Zion Church, Rathgar.
Joanna explains the planning was a pretty stress free experience;
“Planning the wedding was not particularly stressful, but this is probably because we ended up planning this wedding for a very long time. The only slightly stressful bit was that I was 4/5 months pregnant at the date of our wedding and my belly decided to start popping out that week, leading to some last minute alterations. I even had a spare, looser dress to change into at the reception if my wedding dress felt too tight later in the evening,” she explained.
“The feeling of love and support from all of our family and friends is what stands out most in my mind about the day,” Joanna added, “As we had a Wiccan handfasting, Jon wrote the whole ceremony and his friends were the High Priestess and Priest who performed that ritual for us in my parents’ back garden. My mum made all the bows for the church decorations as well as being part of the Flower Guild who did the flowers in the church for our wedding, and making lots of other little decorations for her house for after the Wiccan ceremony. My mum also wrote everybody’s name on a leaf, which we used as the place settings for the reception. I carved two pumpkins with J’s which sat at the ends of the bar at the reception with little tea lights in them. We also make mini jars of strawberry jam, marmalade, apple butter and mixed fruit chutney which we put on the tables as favours. Jon’s brother, Shaun, who is Northern Ireland’s Chef of the Year, made our wedding cake for us along with his colleague from Linen Hill Kitchen & Deli. He drove all the way down from County Down with it the night before the wedding. One other not quite DIY thing was that we used my maternal grandmother’s charm bracelet as the gold in our wedding rings. It is really nice to think of it being repurposed to be worn this way as no one in the family was going to wear the bracelet.”
“The day was brilliant although we did have an almost disaster with the bus we had hired to bring most of my Danish relatives from the hotel to the church. Firstly the driver left very late from the hotel and then headed in the wrong direction! Luckily our guests were able to point him in the right direction using the GPS on their phones, but I still had to circle the block in my car while we waited for them to arrive. Possibly the first time the bride has gotten to the church before all of her guests!” said Joanna.
Wedding Suppliers
Ceremony: Brides parent’s back garden and Zion Church, Rathgar.
Reception: Thomas Prior Hall, Bewley’s Hotel, Ballsbridge.
Wedding dress & shoes: Anne Gregory Design, Newtownmountkennedy.
Jewellery: Carol Shaw Bridal Jewellery, Rathfarnham.
Hair: Kuts n’ Kurls, Rathmines.
Makeup: Lisa Redmond from Emma Farrell Makeup.
Bouquets & Buttonholes.: Blooming Amazing Florists, Ranelagh.
Groomswear: Suitable Company, Duke St.
Cake: Linen Hill Kitchen & Deli, Banbridge.
DJ: Digital DJs.
