The recovery BBQ

Thankfully the sun shone the day after our wedding because we had scheduled a BBQ in one of the most amazing places we've ever stayed, but if it had rained it wouldn't have been very much fun.

Dave & I stumbled on Villa Ana Margharida on our first trip to Portugal, just walking on the beach, we looked up and thought we were tripping when we saw this amazing collection of houses facing on to the beach which looked like something from a Hansel & Grettel set.  We eventually found the letting company and managed to book the whole place to stay the week of our wedding and planned to have our BBQ there the day after the wedding.

Because Ann Frost & her team from the Quinta de SantAna were so amazing at everything, we had no hesitation in asking them to do the catering for the BBQ and so on the day we served up a feast of roasted pork, barbequed fish & shellfish and an amazing selection of salads & desserts.  Most importantly, there was a constant flow of bloody marys, caipirinhas & long island iced teas along with wine & beers to cure all the sore heads from the night before.

Everything started relatively civilised with some nice mellow music played by our rockabilly DJ.  A few hours later and people were jumping in the pool and we were forming a big train around the venue doing the Conga.  Of course we then improvised with a dance floor and the DJ played a few encores of We are the Champions and the Summer of 69.  I didn't want it to end!!

Our wedding day

I don't think I actually need to say an awful lot about our wedding day, cause I think the photos say enough. Our day was beautiful and perfect from start to finish. The morning of the wedding, both families had breakfast & got scrubbed up in their respective abodes. My parents had an amazing house up on the cliffs in Ericeira and our amazing hair & make-up guys, Rui & Miguel came and made it all seem like so much fun!

Meanwhile down in Vila Galé, the Porter family, breakfasted in their suite (pure posh!!) and then had to run for cover when the heavens opened.

Then we all headed for Gradil! We had arranged for some very refreshing lemonades to be served outside the church when everybody arrived, so no doubt some people were topping these up with a traditional pre-wedding tipple.

I was very lucky to travel in a beautiful old Citroen with my Dad and arrived 10 minutes early so had to skulk around the outskirts of the village until we got the call to say that everybody was in the church. And then we were outside the church and I was leaning on my Dad waiting for the processional song to begin. I took a deep breath and drank in the moment and it was very beautiful to walk in to that amazing church and feel the love from everybody smiling as we walked down the aisle.

And there he was. Smiling. My fella.

Lots of newly-weds comment on it, but I definitely agree that the ceremony was one the most special part of the day. We were so luck to be in such a beautiful church, resplendent with the most amazing flowers and surrounded by friends & family. Our musicians were sitting up on the altar beside us and we got such a kick from hearing them play the music we had planned in our sitting room one Saturday afternoon a few weeks previously, including Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol and Imagine by John Lennon.

My Uncle John got everybody's goosebumps going with a very special rendition of 'She moved through the fair' and all of our readers & singers were our friends & family which made it so personal. To then be married by my uncle, who is like my second father, made it such a familiar event that there was no nerves or at least I didn't think there was, though I do remember trembling trying to light the candle together.

There were lots of other details in the church that some people may not have even seen; Mum had made two beautiful ring pillows and included material from her own wedding hat. The wedding programs, which I had printed on my Gocco, included a little story about the Galo de Barcelos, the Portuguese emblem for good vs. evil we had included in our wedding invitations.

Then we get to walk out of the church to the beautiful harmony of the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. Outside everybody got a cone of petals to throw, which were printed on music sheets of Queen songs including 'We are the Champions' and then we walked through the village to the wedding reception. This was definitely one of my favourite parts of the day. Our violinist serenaded us all the way through the village and the locals peeked from windows & doors to wish us well. It did feel surreal-ly like a fairy-tale.

As we walked in to the venue we had a surprise for guests with two stilt walkers to meet & greet us, which immediately added to the festival atmosphere and then people wandered around the Quinta, ooh-ing & aah-ing at the food, the location, the drinks, the fun...it was amazing. We wandered off for a few photos and then the heavens opened.

Apparently it's good luck in Portugal if it rains on your wedding day so we just rolled with it and enjoyed the games of trying to drag my dress through the puddles.

Another very special moment was when Dave & I were announced in to the dinner hall, walking together through that crowd with everybody applauding and smiling, was very beautiful and I know that anybody who has made that walk will vouch for how special it is. The dining room in the Quinta looked amazing with stunning flowers, table settings & beautiful music playing the background arranged by one of our musical consultant extraordinaires, Karl.

The tables were named after some of our favourite places and each table had one of our photos from that location, which looked beautiful framed and sitting on an easel. I had used the Gocco again to print the menus and they looked so cute tied up with the napkins.

The speeches were personal, touching & very funny on all sides. The necessary thank-you's were said and both Dave & I got to thank those people who have made our lives so wonderful; our parents, families & friends.

One of the areas we put alot of effort in to in planning the wedding, was the party after dinner. We really wanted the tempo to change and people to feel that they could kick back and enjoy themselves. We had bought lots of decorations in Ikea on our last trip to Portugal and had strung 70 paper lanterns outside, lit by LED light bulbs on magnets. Ann in the Quinta had added a fire-pit and lots of candles and the place looked amazing. We added a photo-booth with lots of costume options for people to unleash their inner performer and after the cake cutting the music started. Definitely one of my highlights. Most people didn't know that we had the King ready & waiting on the wings, so we got everybody to fill the dance-floor and had such fun at the amazement on people's faces as Elvis entered the building! Portuguese Elvis was incredible, we danced & danced and absolutely loved every minute of it.

Another spread of food was laid out and everybody was amazed with the food; fresh shrimp, cheeses, meats & ridiculous amounts of amazing desserts. I could spend hours just talking about the food, the presentation, the standard and the extra pounds people added to their waist-lines, because people just couldn't leave the food behind.

A few hours of disco fun followed and the jackets came off. Our friends Steve & Bob donned their disco hats and hit the decks and we danced & danced and then it was time for home. We couldn't believe it but the night was still young and many more hours of debauchery followed in Ericeira!!

Our team!

We were so lucky to have such an amazing group of helpers to make this the wedding we wanted. Of course there were times in the last few weeks that we asked ourselves was it all worth it.

Their efforts and support both before and during the wedding were incre

dible; from finding the right stamps to printing certain church programs again cause a type-oh led to a blasphemous reference to spending hours hanging our paper lanterns

Hindsight would suggest it was and the level of gratitude we got from our guests, but of course it wouldn't have been possible without the following star-players:

Our parents:

Their generosity, help & support was ridiculous and maybe sometimes could have been more acknowledged, but Dave & I both hope our parents felt we did them proud and that they enjoyed it too.

They didn't look half-bad on the day either, our mothers put such creativity & effort into their outfits for the day and especially their hats which made them look so beautiful and elegant. Our fathers scrubbed up pretty well too!

The beautiful bridesmaids

Máire, my sister and Susan, my amazing friend, were my bridesmaids. Over the years they have been my rocks of support when I needed to vent or knew how to wrap me in cotton wool when I needed it. It was so special to have them there with us through everything.

The Groomsmen

Ray, Dave's brother and Conor, his best man were the glue that held us all together. Working in the background they smoothed over the broken house locks, restaurant table settings and all the other crappy little jobs that had to get done but never looked for acknowledgement or thanks. Ray spent the best part of the week before the wedding in his car running around doing errands for us. Conor arrived and smiled and everything was ok. He also managed to make the whole room ripple with laughter during his speech, which light-heartedly threw a few punches at Dave's style choices over the years. Too funny!

Our Families

We were very lucky that my uncle Tadhg agreed to marry us in Portugal and all through the process he made us feel like there was nothing to stress or fear about, in his hands it all felt ok. It made it so beautiful to have him with us during the rehearsal, on the altar and all the way through the week.

Our siblings and their partners made it all come together. Ailbhe & Fiona, who were Raymo's soldiers but did so much in their own right, made us very proud. Fiona came in at the eleventh hour to sing the psalm and did a very beautiful job of it. Ailbhe made us very proud and honoured to have her there, from her beautiful reading to our welcome home surprise dinner, it was absolutely amazing to have her as part of our team!

Aoife's brothers:

We bow down and applaud you for your help & support. Thank you all, Mossy, Johnny, Diarmuid & David for being so amazing, helpful and gracious. For mucking in and never complaining when I sent you in the searing heat to hang paper lanterns the day before the wedding. For partying when your services were required. For showing us how to surf body boards, gracefully, in the pool. Míle buíochas!

The Murphy boys, Victor & Tadhg, made us smile from beginning to end. Thank you for being there, Tadhg for being the most wonderful page-boy (check out his cute dickie bow, thanks Peigí!), we will remind you of it in years to come! Victor, thanks for the amazing dance moves and always being there for us!

Why Portugal?

Our wedding took place in Gradil, Mafra, Portugal. The question we are continually asked is why Portugal and why this part of Portugal.

Dave & I have travelled alot and love sunshine, holidays and the vibe of surf-towns. Did I tell you we love sunshine? Well being able to have all of our friends together for a few days in the sunshine was priority number one in choosing a wedding location. We also didn't want our

wedding in a typical hotel function room, it's not that we're above it, we just like something a little different. So getting married in Ireland, though we did look at it, it was hard to tick all of the boxes, especially on the weather front. We then started looking at locations in Spain, as I speak Spanish I would have loved to use the opportunity to use it more and there was an area in Spain called the Costa de la Luz, which we had previously visited and loved. The big stickler here was that finding a good location, good accommodation and not forcing people only travelling for a few days to drive for more than a few hours once they landed, was proving difficult.

So our good friend Daire whose opinion we trusted, had previously lived in northern Portugal working for Jameson. He always sang the praises of the coast between Lisbon & Porto. We didn't really want to head for the Algarve as we wanted something more Portuguese than a commercial tourist resort. There were direct flights from Cork & Dublin to Lisbon, so when Daire mentioned Ericeira, it seemed to tick alot of boxes.

A few hours of Google searches later, I came across the Quinta de SantAna in Gradil, only 30 mins from Ericeira. I got in touch with the owner, Ann Frost and she seemed to be on our wave-length immediately. Ann is an amazing woman who runs all of the events at the Quinta, has 7 sons under the age of 20 and her lovely husband James runs the vineyard at the Quinta. The images & descriptions we got from her got us very excited so after a little to-ing & fro-ing of emails, we were pretty sure we had found the right spot. So in February, Dave & I hopped on a plane out to Lisbon and went to meet Ann at the Quinta. Even in the early spring sunshine of February we knew we were in the right place. The Quinta was absolutely amazing, Ann seemed to anticipate and gauge exactly the type of vibe we were going f

or with the wedding; rustic vineyard wedding meets festival fun.

So that's why we choose Ericeira & Gradil. On that same trip, Dave & I checked out all the hotels in town and were looking for somewhere to hold a BBQ the day after the wedding. We felt that if people were going to the bother of travelling to Portugal on our behalf, we should at least host them for two days. Walking along the promenade one day we saw a collection of houses on the waterfront that looked like a cross between a Disney film-set for Hansel & Grettel and something Gaudi had designed. Bingo! Here was a collection of houses within walking distance of town but right on the beach with a beautiful pool which we booked out for all of our friends to use the week of the wedding. We kept pinching ourselves that it was all working out too well and were very excited about the surprise people would get when they saw it all.