Barefoot in the Sand – A Wedding Photographer’s Intimate Wedding on an Irish Beach…

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"It has been said thousand times before but it’s because it *is* true – leave all things that don’t really matter behind you and don’t look back. Concentrate on what that day is really about and what truly matters to you as individuals, as a couple, as a family..."

 

Remember this? If not, you might want to read through that post {and click through to Facebook link provided} – it's a lovely story, and it provides some context as to why I'm so thrilled to be featuring this beautiful wedding with you today.  From my heart – I just adore every single thing about this intimate, laid back, heartfelt wedding. The path the couple took to actually getting to the wedding day itself is extraordinary, but I love all the little DIY features too, the bride styling the flowers and making the cake – the memory box on the beach, the wedding ring for the couple's daughter, it is all so delightful.

Stefanie & Jan tied the knot on 24th of June 2012 with a ceremony held on the beach at Castlerock in Ireland, followed by a reception at Mullaghard Beach House.  This planning story behind this wedding wasn't so straight forward.  Stefanie and Jan sadly had to cancel their original wedding plans, and Love My Dress played a key role in helping them get back on track…

"We had planned on having our honeymoon in Ireland since the very first moment we had decided to get married. Initially, we had planned a wedding in Germany, but we had to cancel this and this left us feeling crushed, like we had had our dream stolen from us. An SOS message to my favourite wedding blogger Annabel resulted in this message being posted on the Love My Dress Facebook page and the response changed everything for us.

Many readers who advised us, offered us comfort and ideas, we slowly started thinking about an eventual alternative to our original wedding plans – something that would permit us to fulfill these wishes we had…"

Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2012, 'This Modern Love'

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach 

"I made all of the bouquets and the boutonnière for my husband.  I simply bought flowers that were passing in our colour theme (blue, purple, gold)…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"My husband Jan and I have quite an international story. We met back in 2008, in the outback of Australia as we were both backpackers and carefree young people. We fell in love, despite the thousands of miles separating our homes.

He moved to Canada, we then moved to Germany. In our home, you’ll hear English, French & German, sometimes all spoken in the same sentence! It was important to us to integrate this very special side of our lives into our wedding day…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"I love how just a few days {three!} after I met Jan, I already had that overwhelming impression that I had met someone important.

Of course, I didn't know how much important he was at that moment when I met him, but enough to feel the need to note in my travel journal that I might have just met my soul mate at the complete other end of the world and couldn't imagine if this was true, how life would keep us together.

I'm not one who really believe in miracles, and yet, life did manage to find a way and worked its magic…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"The whole “let’s have a wedding in the middle of our honeymoon” thingy started with a little tiny idea from my husband – a ceremony bare foot in the sand. At the beginning, it was more like a joke, like words thrown in the air, but then, we thought about it and the more we were *really* thinking about it, the more awesome and “us” it sounded.

We had found a new dream to craft, it felt amazing and it would be really, really simple; no fuss, no stress, just people & things whom we loved…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach 

"As we had never been in Ireland and/or the UK, it was pretty hard to decide where we would prepare the whole thing. We then discovered the photographers 'This Modern Love' and we so fell in love with their photos that we decided to make the ceremony close to them.

Looking for a sweet little cottage, a nice beach and beautiful surroundings eventually led us to Castlerock…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"Our ceremony was quite special. We are already legally married so we were free to hold our ceremony anywhere we wanted. Our celebrant {Shevaun from Seasons of Light} helped us craft a ceremony specially made for us, by us…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"It was our words, put all together beautifully, our love story told in a manner that warmed our hearts despite the cold. It was really special and so wonderful. I also translated the whole ceremony and made a few scripts in French for those who had a little bit of difficulty following.."

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach 

"We got only amazing and positive comments on the ceremony – how it was something they had never seen, something so true to us and simple and how it had all moved them so much…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach 

"The main element from our ceremony was our memory box. My husband and I have put a love letter to the other in the box and our daughter, a drawing of our family.

The barrel for the ceremony was from Grace & Saviour…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach 

"We had a nice bottle of wine, which was signed by all the guests present, and we then also put it in the box. At the end of the ceremony, we nailed the box to only open again in five years, in order to drink the wine, read the letters, bring back memories and renew the whole for another five years. It marked the beginning of a new family tradition…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"We decided we wanted to give our daughter the surprise gift of a ring.  The look on her face was so precious when we opened the box!"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"I really wanted to integrate the multi-cultural theme into our wedding (it was French-German-English speaking wedding) and reflected this in our wedding favours. The little cards saying 'Merci' were designed by myself. The little umbrellas were chocolate from Lindt.

The little bottle of Irish cream were from the Celtic Whiskey shop in Dublin and the little bronze shamrock from an online shop…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"I made the cake myself the day before the wedding!  I made two vanilla cakes with a filling made of cream cheese and blueberry & apple jam I made (to give it a purple colour and for the yumminess of it as well ;)). Before serving it, I poured a butter cream I made during the morning over it. Voilà!

Infact, I prepared all the food (and the boys grilled what needed to be grilled…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"The theme of the day was a cross somewhere between a chic 20’ish pirates multi-cultural beach wedding party! It sounds crazy but it reflected us, as a couple. 

It was also the National Day of where I come from, so it was great to celebrate it with my people! The colours for the day were mainly blue, purple and gold with a hint of green here & there. And of course, there were references to Star Wars in both our wedding cake & wedding vows!"

Irish-Destination-Wedding-S&J112

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"It is really hard to be a wedding photographer looking for a wedding photographer. Not only you know *exactly* what you are looking for but you are also looking for someone with whom you know you will just be able to let it go on your wedding day and accept not to be in control of the photos.

Tim & Claire of This Modern Love, are such wonderful people and they have helped so, so much with everything – once we found them, we decided to locate our ceremony close to them to make sure they’d be there.   

Tim was great on the wedding day, it was like having a friend there who happened to have camera. He captured all the little (and big) moments of the day and I could have not chosen someone better. I’d recommend him in a heartbeat…" 

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Click to expand this feature and see ALL The beautiful wedding photographs…


Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach 

"I dreamed of a plunging v-back & silky satin all along, while looking for a dress. The market for wedding dresses in Germany is still quite conservative in the wedding shops & designers’ stores around here and I just couldn’t pay thousands of euros for a dress that just wasn’t for me.

I found something on Ebay that was perfect for me…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

"Both the ceremony & reception were supposed to happen on the beach. We had planned to get married, then make a BBQ picnic directly on the spot. But the forecast decided otherwise.

The day earlier, it was raining so bad, we weren't even sure if we would go to the beach at all. But in our minds, we just needed to be bare foot in the sand as it all started with this very idea! We decided we would be having a beach ceremony even it was raining and the only thing that would stop us would be the storm of the century (which luckily didn't happen). With 13°C, it was quite cold & windy (to put it midly), but it's not what we & our guests remember.

We remember being all together, joined by love, bare foot in the sand (squeel!). Because of the changes of last minute, before the actual morning, I did not even see the beach myself nor the cottage where we held the reception and where I styled everything! It was challenging but absolutely perfect…"

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

 

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Intimate destination wedding on an Irish Beach

Huge congratulations Stefanie & Jan on your simply beautiful wedding day. I can't thank you enough for sharing your story with us all and I'm so happy my blog was able to play a small role in your perfect day.

Thank you too to This Modern Love for sharing these beautiful wedding photographs.

I'd love to hear from my readers. This wedding has really touched my heart – I hope it has yours too.

See lots more wonderful inspiration here, Irish weddings, beach weddings, blue, purple, gold and destination weddings.

Much love everyone,

Annabel

Heart

 

Photographer – This Modern Love
Venue – Morning cottage, Hawks Bay Cottage 12 Apostles in Castlerock + Mullaghard Beach House,
Celebrant – Shevaun from Seasons of Light
Brides dress – Ebay + blue cardigan from Mango
Brides Veil – Posh Veils (Etsy)
Brides Shoes – H&M
Brides Earrings – I am
Grooms Suit – Blazer: Bugatti, Shirt: Pioneer, Pants: Mavi Jeans, Shoes: Converse
Flowers – bought and styled by the bride
Cake Designer – Made by the bride
Flowergirl Dresses – Zara + sweater from  H&M
Rings – Bride’s ring: Kraemer, Groom’s ring: Createyourring, Etsy
Barrel on the beach – Grace & Saviour 

Annabel

Annabel View all Annabel's articles

Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.

21 thoughts on “Barefoot in the Sand – A Wedding Photographer’s Intimate Wedding on an Irish Beach…

  1. Im so glad everything worked out for these guys and their day looks so perfect. It actually bought a tear to my eye when I read about how they gave a ring to their daughter! Simply gorgeous and massive congratulations x

  2. Beautiful! I love how stripped back it is and still looks amazing. It just shows what really matters. Awww, congrats! xx

  3. So glad to see that, in the end, things not working out, meant that things worked out perfectly for them. Lovely images and the memory box is such a wonderful idea (especially as the wine means you can’t just forget about it!). Congratulations to them all.

  4. I remember this story, so glad it turned out this way for them and wow, isn’t the bride stunning? Am a little in love with this wedding, so beautiful xxx

  5. Thank you Annabel so much for featuring us on here! It was truly an amazing day and we will cherish those memories forever!
    Thanks everybody for all the lovely comments!
    xXx

  6. I think this might be it – the most gorgeous wedding I’ve ever seen! I love the simplicity of it. Beautiful photos and what a gorgeous bride, and loving the blue cardi!

  7. I adore this wedding! From the beautiful location (I was there 3 weeks ago on holiday and it is a stunning beach), to the cute bridal cardi and the really relaxed family vibe. I love how weddings are slowly moving back to the low key, unfussy (and inexpensive!) family affairs they used to be. very inspired. Congrats to the happy couple

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