This could be it..

I think we have found it.....eeeeeekkkkkkk!!!!

The perfect venue for our wedding. It's not too big and not too small. A beautiful country manor house which is picturesque.

We actually fell in love with this place before we had even seen it. The reviews we had read were great and no one had a bad word to say about the place - not even people we knew. On paper this seemed like the perfect place.

I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hope up but I couldn't help it. The pictures looked amazing. The grounds surrounding the place looked beautiful and it would mean we wouldn't have to spend money on a location for pictures. Bonus!!

So Colm and I arranged to go down and meet with the wedding co-ordinator down there to discuss all the details.

From the moment we drove up I knew this is where I wanted to have my reception!! It was gorgeous!!

It doesn't look big but it actually is and we would have our own private building for the rexeption which you can just make out in the left hand corner of the picture. It has 15 rooms - all of which would be booked for our families and there would only be our wedding on the day so we would basically have the place all to ourselves.

The reception hall itself is breath taking!! Very old fashioned with banqueting flags hanging from the ceiling. Beautiful candleadbras are the centre pieces on every table (which are included in the price) and with a mixture of round and square tables the whole room is a picture of elegance. 

We were shown around the whole hotel and everything just seemed so quaint and cozy. The place is a true hidden gem. I was so pleased to hear that the photographer that we wanted to hire for the day had his wedding here. you can't get better than that - a photographer has probably seen every wedding venue up and down the country and the fact that he chose the same place as us for his wedding - it has to be amazing.

Did I mention the bridal suite? OMG!!! Gorgeous!! It's an L shaped room all open planned and it looks so elegant.

It's beautiful four poster bed and chaise longues make this room fit for a princess!! And it looks right out onto the wedding reception hall so if I want to head to the room to freshen up before dinner I can see everyone entering the reception.

The place is beautiful and the price is right. what more could a girl ask for. Of course it isn't just my wedding so I wanted to have a good long talk with Colm first. We hadn't really been to many other places to take a look but we had all the brochures and this place seemed to shine above the rest. Thankfully he loves it as much as I did and wanted to book it there and then.

So we have provisionally booked our wedding reception. Colm is home from Huddersfield on Saturday (he has been working there all week) and we will be taking our parents there on Sunday to take a look at it and to pay our deposit and then there's no going back after that.

It all seems so real now. But now the real fun begins - MONEY SAVING!!! Which is a lot harder for us than it probably is for most people but we will do it. After all it is for our dream wedding and we do have two years to do it - eeeekkkkk!!!!

Exciting times ahead...

So even though it is two years to our wedding I have so many ideas already about what I want and how I want things to look.

I don't know if it is a little bit old fashioned but I want my wedding to have a theme. Not that I have decided what that theme is yet but I think it will make all the decisions that much easier. Although with my luck probably not.

I don't know if any of you out there are planning a wedding at the moment but I tent to get a lot of advice from absolutely everyone. Usually I don't mind - people are just trying to be helpful. But when people start criticising every idea I have and trying to come up with their own - that's where I draw the line. It's our wedding, me and Colm and at the end of the day as long as we enjoy ourselves I don't care what people think.

Thankfully working in marketing for a wholesale retailer means I make wedding ads all the time and I get to buy every issue and magazines like "The Northern Ireland Wedding Journal" and "Getting Married In Northern Ireland" have become like my bibles.

I actually even cut pictures out of them that I like and stick them into a scrap book.

My wedding is a budget wedding. Colm and I have discussed how much we want to spend on our big day and I refuse to go over that amount. I intend to cut corners everywhere and anywhere I can from the cake to the dress!

So I plan to share everything with you from prices to mistakes I make and all in between and if anyone has any helpful suggestions they would like to share then please feel free.

xxxThanksxxx

And so it begins....

As I am writing this I can't believe it has been 9 years since I first started going out with Colm and almost 5 years since he asked me to marry him.
You are probably wondering what has taking us so long to set a date. Well let me explain...

6 years ago I was a student in university studying Interactive Multimedia Design. I was living during the week in Belfast and studying in Jordanstown and at the weekend I was coming home to my family, my part-time job and my boyfriend. Typical right?

It didn't last long and over the New Year in 2007 I found out that at 18 I was pregnant. Not my plan but I grew up around kids all my life and I while I was nervous about having a baby I was also excited.

Mya came along on 27th October 2007 and the moment she came into our lives we fell in love with her. From the day she was born she had her own personality and she definately knew how to keep us on our toes.

The following February Colm and I took a break to Amsterdam for a few days and while we were away Colm asked me to marry him. I was so thrilled and like every girl I immediately started to plan our wedding but there was one thing stopping us - money.

I was a student and Colm was an apprentice electrician. Not exactly rolling in it. So the plans were put on hold - as least for a few years until we were more financially stable. Since we had a child together and both lived with our parents we decided that the first thing we should do was to move in together so we could be a proper family and raise our little girl together.

So I graduated my degree in 2011 and got a job in marketing in a retail company close to home. I loved my job and for the first time Colm and I were in a position where a wedding was possible.

But by now Mya was 4 years old and in my mind that was a huge age gap for siblings. I have a big sister who is two years older than me and while we killed each other growing up we are very very close now and I wanted Mya to have that with a sister or brother.

So when we sat down to talk about the wedding we decided that we wanted another baby more. So on October 17th our little girl Sienna was born.

So there we were, living together with two children and good jobs so what was next? A wedding....

I have always wanted to start a blog and this seemed like the perfect thing to write about, the planning, booking, budgeting and arranging of our wedding.

I know there are plenty of blogs out there were people are doing the exact same thing but living in Ireland there aren't too many that I can relate to...

So here we are...