Lisa & Richard Real Life Wedding

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This month’s Real Life Wedding has been such an exciting one to do! I had the pleasure of interviewing the fabulous Lisa Cannon of Xpose about her fairytale Florence wedding to Richard in September. It’s a must read!

The couple: Lisa Cannon & Richard Keatley
Ceremony Venue: Chiesa di San Martino a Maiano
Reception Venue: Castello di Vincigliata
Date: 3rd September 2015
Dress: Suzanne Neville from Kadee Bridal
No of Bridesmaids/Groomsmen: 3 of each
Bridesmaids Dresses: Synan O’Mahony
Groomsmens suits: Hacket; Groom’s suit – Tom Ford
Photographer: John Ryan Photography
Videographer: AG Studio Videography
Flowers: Wedding Flowers by Josephine
Cake: Trace of Cakes
Band: Harlequin
DJ: Alan Geraghty
Hair: David Reynolds from Zeba
Make-up: Aimee Connolly
Wedding Planner: Blaithin O’Reilly
Length of engagement: 21 months

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How did you find planning your wedding?
Planning the wedding was stressful at times because we were planning the wedding from Ireland when it was abroad. I went and worked with Blaithin O’Reilly who is an Irish wedding planner and she was fantastic! She helped me so much in the last few weeks and months of organising the wedding and she was superb! I couldn’t recommend her more highly. Although difficult, it all came together in the end so I was delighted and I was glad to have Blaithin on my side.

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Were your bridesmaids hands on?
They couldn’t be very hands on, purely because everything was abroad and I was organising everything so unfortunately not really. It was only more when we got over there that they could prep. But they were fantastic in helping with the dresses and being involved in any aspects I needed help on. Sure they are my best friends.

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Favourite moment of the day?
Oh that’s hard to say. Probably releasing the balloons in honour of my Mum, that was lovely. I had a few but it’s hard how they all blurred in together. I think walking up the aisle was pretty good, I liked that and I liked the church. That was good fun.

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Were there any hiccups on the day of the wedding?
Oh there was loads and loads of hiccups on the day! But nothing anyone noticed. One of the groomsmen got delayed trying to find where the bridesmaids and I were staying and he got lost cause the car didn’t have SatNav so that delayed us getting to the church, which delayed the buses to pick up people at end of the wedding ceremony so some people missed our entrance into the castle but sure these things happen. On any given day everything could work smoothly but when you have 100 people, all coming from a different country, nobody speaks the language, people running late because of flights, there’s always going to be things that go wrong. There was a few things that as a bride you try not to get annoyed and it’s hard not to, but you have to put your best foot forward and just say look that’s life and it is, it’s so out of your control.

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Do you wish you had done anything differently? E.g. booked something earlier, different supplier, invited more/less, etc?
I wish I had gone with an Irish wedding planner from the very beginning. I didn’t get Blaithin on board until we had 2-3 months to go. I think I wouldn’t have been as stressed and it would have been better in every way. Working with the Italians is very tricky with many different factors like language and timing and miscommunication and I’m glad every worked out perfect it’s just that I wish I had gone with and Irish planner who knew exactly how to handle situations at times when they got tricky. We were very ambitious with our wedding. We were releasing balloons, I had videos with celebrities in it, we had a band and a cake being brought from Ireland, maybe this hadn’t been done before with Italians, sometimes they couldn’t understand why we didn’t use an Italian band or florists etc. But that was our choice so we made life a little bit more difficult for ourselves so I think if I had a planner from the start that would have smoothed things out a little bit better.

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Anything unusual that you want to promote the supplier?
My suppliers were great, they really helped me. The flowers by Weddings by Josephine were amazing and as were the band Harlequin. Varak & Clyde were brilliant, they made heart shaped wooden tealight holders as well as the lanterns in the church and the cake stand. Weddingcandles.ie did personalised candles as the wedding favours. InkPretty.ie did my beautiful Vera Wang invitations and booklets. Paul from Top Table Design did the table plan which was brilliant. I was really glad to support Irish suppliers and have some there with me. I even got my nails done in Dublin before I left!

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What do you wish you had known when planning your wedding?
I wish I had known that life can sometimes take over in your wedding, you can’t have everything perfect, it doesn’t work that way. As well, I wish I had got more sleep, that’s a really big factor. I was run ragged in the run up to my wedding. I was absolutely exhausted and I was living on nerves and energy. I know I had become quite slim and that’s a great bonus but deep down the morning of the wedding I was tired. I felt fresh and I felt content and I felt delighted to be marrying Richard but I’d say all in the run up to the wedding I had a handful of hours sleep. I would love to have been really well rested. I would say it’s an absolute zero for most brides but it’s one of the things you wish for yourself that you are more rested, that you aren’t living on your nerves.

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I’m so grateful to Lisa & Richard for allowing me to share their special day. I hope you enjoyed reading it! If you want to find out about Richard & Lisa’s amazing honeymoon click here.

Love from my world,

Lisa x

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