Our Wedding Story: A year of flirting and the rest was history

Sinéad Dawson and Bryan Devlin

After meeting through friends just before they sat their Leaving Cert in 2008, Sinéad and Bryan, both from Templeogue, “danced around each other for over a year” before they became an official couple.

The proposal happened at home in Knocklyon in 2015 and from then on, “venue hunting was not plain sailing,” says Sinéad, a primary school teacher.

“I’d say we looked at every possible place within an hour of Dublin. My uncle Gerry suggested Ballymagarvey Village and when we visited it on the open day, we immediately fell in love with it.”

On November 3rd, 2016, Sinéad and Bryan were married in the Church of the Annunciation, Rathfarnham, by their priest Fr Martin Noone.

The bride’s sister Áine sang and her former music teacher Michelle McNamara played the flute.

Bridesmaid dresses

The parents of the bride are David and Geraldine and the groom’s are Sandra and Dermot.

“All our family and friends were amazing on the lead-up to the wedding . . . Bryan’s auntie Margaret did the alterations for the bridesmaid dresses. Ken, a groomsman, made the trip back from Australia as did Bryan’s brother Darragh.”

Sinéad and Bryan’s wedding was the second time the band The Poorboys had played a Dawson family wedding.

“They were my sister Ciara’s wedding band too . . . I think we were engaged about three days when Bryan texted me telling me he’d booked them!”

He also issued them with clear instructions: "No cheese – no Rock the Boat!"

Autumnal elements

During their wedding planning, the couple didn’t set out with a theme but ended up incorporating autumnal elements into the day .

“From the invitations and Mass booklets, to the leafy place names and fingerprint tree we had as a guest book. I suppose this reflected a family tree and our closeness to our families. We love Dublin and our tables were named after places like the Shelbourne, Musicmaker, Stephen’s Green, Grafton Street and Bunsen.”

The newlyweds honeymooned in New York where they spent a summer together on a J1 visa.

Photographs: Brian Mulligan