True Love Tuesday: Shirley & Jonathan

Hello! We hope you’ve welcomed December and the Christmas magic with a smile today! Today we’re sharing a wedding that will add lots of sparkle to your day! Shirley and Jonathan were married in March this year in Maghera, and held their reception in one of our favourite childhood haunts, the Arcadia in Portrush! Shirley is a fantastic cake designer and as you’ll see, has a great sense of style – pink wedding gown, oh yes!!

Jonathan and Shirley first met at the north coast’s finest nightclub with Jonathan offering to give Shirley and her friend a life home. That night they exchanged numbers and over the coming months discovered they had a lot in common.

After the proposal which Shirley admits, ‘didn’t really go to plan!’ the couple began booking their suppliers for their special day.

“Being a wedding cake designer, we had both been lots of wedding fayres and knew who we wanted to hire for our big day so it was all about getting deposits put on our favourite wedding vendors. The biggest challenge was finding a venue that would hold our modest numbers and not look half empty and allow us to have our two dogs with us,” explained Shirley.

Instead of sticking to a specific theme the couple chose items that they loved and that reflected them as a couple; “Our stunning handmade invites from Paper Rose where made from 7’’ vinyl records and we also had a full size juke box hired for the reception! We just ran with the look of each part so the church had a soft romantic feel, downstairs in the Arcadia had bright beach style feel and we added bright mixed tulips, we used the upstairs for our meal and went with a more modern look with ghost chairs and black table linen supplied by the fab Swift Wedding and Event Décor,” said Shirley.

Shirley was sure she wasn’t going to choose a traditional ivory wedding gown and set her heart on finding the perfect pink dress; “I was on the internet searching away and came across Watters Palm Springs gown in Oatmeal that was a very nude blush pink. I was determined that this was my dress even though I found it very difficult to track it down, but after a bit of emailing and ringing around I found it and it was even in Northern Ireland. My mum and a good friend and myself headed off to Bangor to Jenny Lindop Bridal. It was the only dress I tried on and wasn’t even tempted to look at anything else, for me it was perfect,” added Shirley.

“The day went without any problems although our nice blue vintage bus didn’t make it as it broke down the day before the wedding, thankfully we had time to make other arrangements. We can both honestly say just having all our family and friends be with us – and that includes our two dogs Max and Wee Millie- was the highlight. Our dogs are as much a part of our family and we couldn’t have enjoyed the day without them there. This was even more important in the fact that we lost our dear boy Max only a couple of months later due to illness,” said Shirley.