It was obvious to Shauna from the very beginning that she wanted to spend her life with her best friend, Christina. They met in secondary school and become fast friends, they were friends for a year or so until Shauna told Christina her feelings and they started going out. The pair now reside in Offaly, Christina’s home county, with their pets.
Three months after the girls got together, Christina brought Shauna for a romantic stroll in the woods and she got down on one knee then and there.
The brides celebrated their Halloween themed wedding day at the set theatre in Langtons House Hotel, Kilkenny with 60 guests.
THE WEDDING TEAM
Shauna’s Ivory bridal gown was purchased in BHS, she accessorised with an embellished belt and her shoes were ‘Emily’ by Ruby Shoo. Christina’s ‘50s style tea length dress is from Lady V London, accessorised with a birdcage veil and ‘baby love’ shoes by irregular choice.
Matalan provided the suits for the brides’ fathers’ and the best man, Christina’s brother. Bridesmaid and flowergirl dresses were bought in Lindy Bop.
Busy Bee bakery in Walsall provided a beautiful black wedding cake with orange leaves, to match the Halloween wedding theme. The music for the ceremony was prepared by the brides and they had Bobbi Carey perform through the drinks reception. After dinner, Big generator band and DJ took over the tunes and had everybody dancing the night away.
Beauty transformations, Kilkenny beautified the ladies on the morning of the wedding. Younique Moments Photography captured the wedding day perfectly and the brides are delighted with their wedding album. HSE Registrar Ann Boyle officiated the wedding ceremony.
SPECIAL TOUCHES
The happy couple chose to do a lot of the wedding preparations themselves to make the day as personal and unique as possible. Their wedding theme was ‘handcrafted Halloween autumnal’ and the ladies had a lot of fun preparing for it.
Instead of going with traditional floral arrangements, Christina and Shauna made their own origami flowers for the day. “We watched tutorials on YouTube about how to make your own flowers from paper and after a few tries were delighted with the results and began to collect pretty paper and pages from our favourite books, gems and brooches and made our bouquets and 3 bridesmaids bouquets.”
The invitations and ceremony booklets, which featured them both as skeleton brides, were hand drawn by Shauna. The brides also decorated the outside of their guest book with some spare leaves they had bought to decorate the venue. They had pride flags and test tubes full of confetti attached to their ceremony booklets which made for a lot of colour in the pictures.
There were also a lot of kids at the wedding, so the ladies put together Halloween favour boxes with masks, colouring sheets, games, toys and sweets to put at their place settings, which kept them busy and made them all feel special too. For the adults, there were vintage key bottle openers hung up with place settings attached showing guests names and a picture corresponding to a horror movie themed table plan.
They also made their own trick or treat sweets buffet with Halloween orange and black themed sweets and bags. “One of the things we enjoyed the most about planning was putting our personalities into it, DIYing, making things ourselves, doing it right and doing it wrong it all worked out in the end! I would recommend everyone give it a go!” the brides echoed.
Shauna and Christina also had a special table with photos of their loved ones who had passed away. The newlyweds shared their first dance to Bon Jovi’s ‘Always’.
FAVOURITE MEMORIES
Christina has two favourite memories from the big day, the first was seeing Shauna for the first time as she walked down the aisle, “I was nervous but as soon as I saw her I felt an unbelievable feeling of excitement mixed with love.” She also loved the few moments before they were introduced as new wives, when everyone else had sat down for the meal and they had yet to enter the room. They had a few moments together and she had never been happier. Shauna’s favourite memories of the day were Christina walking up the aisle, “We were both shaking, I took her hand and told her I loved her which seemed to calm the nerves so neither one of us could keep ourselves from smiling.” She also loved their first dance and saying her speech, despite her crippling stage fright.
HONEYMOON
The brides went to Disneyland Paris on their honeymoon, as a gift from Shauna’s parents.
Can you tell us in a few words how great Langtons House Hotel was for your wedding?
“We wanted somewhere different and interesting for our ceremony and we came across Langton House Hotel and as soon as we seen the theatre we knew it was just what we were looking for. From the first visit to the big day we could not have been treated any better, no request was too big or too small, attention to detail was incredible both to our needs and our guests. The food is always incredible and we could not have picked a better place to have our special day.” www.langtons.ie
HOW GREAT WAS IT WORKING WITH YOUNIQUE MOMENTS PHOTOGRAPHY?
“We came across our photographer online as she was advertising photography for LGBT weddings. From our first chat she was extremely interested about our plans and was open to ideas and even had a
walk through the day before. All the guests and wedding party loved her as she was fun and relaxed. She really put us at ease as we are quite shy with having photos taken. Our photos are creative and beautiful and have captured memories we will treasure forever.”
