True Love Tuesday: Jean & Stafford

The weather is playing tricks on us, we couldn’t decide on an umbrella or suncream this morning!

Our lovely couple today, Jean and Stafford, first met at the Irish Open in Dublin whilst they were playing wheelchair tennis, although it took a long time until they officially became a couple. “When we did start to see each other we both new very early on that we had found something really special together,” said Jean.

As both jean and Stafford lead hectic lives they began planning as soon as they got engaged and worked as a team to keep stress to a minimum.

“We never looked beyond Lusty Beg even though we had only been there once for a cup of coffee! We just knew it was our perfect venue, our own island to get married on in a place where everyone is so relaxed. After we had our venue and the date sorted we booked the companies we wanted to work with us to do flowers, cake etc and then spread out visiting them across the year. A massive help to reducing our stress levels was sending out our invitations six months before the wedding, although it is not traditional it was a massive task completed really early on and people were able to book their accommodation in advance. This also got people excited about the wedding really early on,” explained Jean.

With their wedding taking place on Tuesday 30th December the couple chose to include lots of sparkle and glitter throughout their day. Jean’s sparkling lace gown from Perfect Day in Lurgan worked perfectly with the theme and the bridesmaids beautiful deep pink dresses.

“The day was amazing! Our minister Colin Hall Thompson added the perfect amount of occasion, religion, humour and romance to the service. Stafford wasn’t too happy when Colin forgot to tell him he could kiss his bride but after a swift reminder that was soon forgotten. The speeches were awesome but partially long as there were four bestmen, three dads, a groom and a bride who wanted to speak! The battery went on the microphone as I started my speech so that came to a swift halt (probably to the delight of the guests!),” said Jean.

“Another really lovely moment was our first dance. As Stafford and I are both in wheelchairs we wanted to do something really special. We decide to put a track together as we have so many songs that were important to us. We decide on Ed Sheeran ‘Thinking Out Loud,’ ‘Shut Up And Dance,’ ‘Walk The Moon’ and ‘Tenerife Sea’ by Ed Sheeran. We contacted First Dance UK through who linked us with AJ Dance Studio in Glengormley and signed up for five lessons. During the lessons we put together a dance route so that we could enjoy our first dance and surprise our guests. We really enjoyed this, we both made some mistakes during it but it didn’t matter because nobody else realised! It has had over 6000 views on Facebook and can be found on Paul Johnston’s videographer’s Facebook page!” added Jean.

Jean & Stafford’s Advice

Make a no stress rule!! We enjoyed each and every step. We paced everything out over the 12 months so we had time to enjoy it. The other thing we would say is don’t sweat the small stuff, we had the most perfect day even though everything didn’t go exactly to plan.