Our wedding story: finding a quiet moment together by the lake

Eamon Fitzgerald, managing director of a UK-based wine company, and nurse Ruth Gannon, both from Dublin, met through friends in London, where Ruth was living at the time. Their first date was over chicken wings at Elephant and Castle, in Dublin, and Eamon proposed on Christmas Eve 2013.

On May 23rd, 2015, they were married at the Church of the Annunciation, Bansha, Co Tipperary, with music from the Aria String Quartet. The reception afterwards was at Kilshane House.

Ruth wore a Sharon Hoey dress. Her bridesmaids were Gillian Asple, Vicki O’Hara, Eimear Crotty, Laura Tierney. They were joined by groomsmen Rory McGowan, Brian FitzGerald, Ronan Butler and Tarun Maitra.

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Before the wedding, the two families gathered at the Gannon household and assembled themselves into a wedding production line involving flowers, hundreds of wine corks for the table-plan and hand-written place cards.

Friends Stevie Hudson and Tony Nugent helped with music on the day, and another friend Penny Allison made the chocolate biscuit cake.

The wine was shipped from the UK, with five litre bottles of Rioja gifted to the couple by a winemaker.

The Bentley Boys and DJ came on after dinner and the newlyweds' first dance was to The One by Kodaline - "Very cheesy," said the bride, laughing.

"Our first dance was a part that we were both equally not looking forward to. We hadn't really put too much thought into it and the video [by Nadine Hyland at Forgetmenotweddings.ie] reveals we definitely didn't do any last-minute dance classes or practice, although we probably should have."

A highlight of the day for Eamon was, “how our photographer pulled us away from the madness for a few minutes to take pictures down by the lake. It was a lovely moment to breathe, and take it all in.”

The night ended with a surprise fireworks display and the following day, 80 guests joined the newlyweds and their dog Bran for pig-on-the-spit, giant board games and music organised by their brother-in-law Dan.

Ruth and Eamon live in Norwich and spent their honeymoon in Mallorca and the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

Photographs: Dave McClelland, davidmcclelland-photography.comSarah Geraghty