Our Wedding Story: Romance takes off after meeting at airport

Jack Cowhey and Ciara Neill

Both from Limerick city, Jack, an air traffic controller at Shannon Airport, met Ciara, a customer services officer, at work in 2010.

A couple of years later, they moved in together and a few months after their daughter Chloe arrived in January 2013, Jack proposed with a ring from Portobello Antiques in Limerick.

The wedding date was set for September 4th, 2016, for which Ciara designed the invitations.

“I always knew I wanted fun caricature invites,” says Ciara, “so when we were in Vegas a year before we got married, we saw a caricaturist and asked would he do a wedding caricature with the intention of using that artwork for our invitations.”

On the wedding day, with her three bridesmaids, Ciara got ready in her grandmother’s house, from where she was picked up by Jack’s uncle in his vintage Mercedes and driven two minutes down the road to St Munchin’s Church.

Cigar bar

Chloe was flower girl along with Ciara’s six-year-old god-daughter Emma.

At the reception in the Strand Hotel, Limerick, Jack had organised a cigar bar and Ciara treated 180 guests to a sweet cart.

Their first dance as a married couple was to Kodaline's The One – the most memorable part of the day for the bride – and the honeymoon was in the Maldives and Dubai.

Their advice to other couples: “Don’t stress over the little things. Everything always comes together in the end . . . Enjoy every minute of it. The day you spent years or months planning just goes in the blink of an eye.”

And on the practical side? “If your dress is a button-up, start getting into it a little earlier than you had planned. It definitely took longer than I had imagined.”

Photographer: Eoghan Lyons Photography, eoghanlyons.com