Living in oz, wedding in Ireland

irishturkey

Hey all, myself and herself have just gotten engaged here in Australia. We want to get married in Ireland but don't really know where to start. Do we contact wedding planners straight away? If so, do we use Irish or Australian? We're thinking something small... Or at least I am but no numbers decided yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Peregrinus

You don't have to use a wedding planner, you know, and most people don't. If you're "thinking something small", then you probably don't need one.

If you do choose to have a wedding planner, definitely get one in Ireland, if that's where the wedding is going to be.

The two things you need to line up as early as you can are (a) the venue and catering for the reception/party, and (b) the church/registry office/celebrant. Those are the bottlenecks, because you will be competing for dates/slots with all the other lovebirds who want to get married at around the same time. Once you have them sorted, pretty well everything else can be organised around them without too much difficulty. And nothing else is really essential; if any other detail of the wedding is causing your grief, you can drop it or substitute it.

Since you're in 'Straylya, choosing a venue you like and negotating with them is a bit of a problem, and this is the one area where a wedding planner might be of most help. But if you have family or friends in Ireland who are willing to assist, they might know your tastes and expectations better than a wedding planner would.

lollpop

I'd echo what Peregrinus said.
Decide whether you want civil/religious ceremony and start looking into that (location & celebrant).
Decide on a venue. You'll need a rough idea of numbers before you pick a venue.
Usually you can provisionally book venues for about 2 weeks with no cost, that allows you to line up the ceremony with the venue for the same date.
It's definitely the hardest part.

TAPA2012

irishturkey wrote: »

Hey all, myself and herself have just gotten engaged here in Australia. We want to get married in Ireland but don't really know where to start. Do we contact wedding planners straight away? If so, do we use Irish or Australian? We're thinking something small... Or at least I am but no numbers decided yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated...

In the same boat! we are also returning home to be married. We started the ball rolling by picking the location. We picked sligo and husband to be local church. We rang the priest and asked about the date and the marriage course. We got our date and the priest was happy to answer any of our questions. We booked the marriage course online (www.accord.ie) cost us 200e but you can get this for 150e if your willing to travel to a different location. There is loads of dates to pick from, we were allowed do it here in Japan either so you could do yours in Australia! We then did up a guest list and then did up a rough budget have to say this was best one i found online on www.mrs2be.ie and then we looked at all the local venues in sligo! I looked at all the reviews on tripadvisor and then searched here for help on the forum. We have found it really helpful!

Best of luck if you need any help, pm me!

Goldenlady

My sister lives in Oz and got married in Ireland last year. I did a lot of stuff for her, but she was also able to do lots online from Oz. I picked the venue, the band, the dj, the flowers, they had a civil ceremony... great day and all the Oz crowd loved it. If you have someone in Ireland that could do it for you, once they knwo your tastes...

annersinoz

Hi Irish Turkey

I have just organised my wedding in Ireland from Australia so i am more than happy to help with some tips. are you planning on going home before the wedding? Alot of people think they need to a take a holiday home to organise but to be honest i dont think its necessary. I arrived home two weeks before my wedding and organised everything else from over here.

- Important tips
- You will need to register your marraige with your local registry office. I rang up my local registry and we were able to give our notification of intent to marry via post and then you only need to visit them at least 5 days before your wedding to register in person (that is important)
- You can also do your pre marraige course over here in Australia if you are having a church wedding. We did an all day course in lane cove and it was pretty good. (whereabouts in australia are you living) - we found the local church had all the information we needed and the local priest signed off on the paperwork.
- Venue - i had my parents and brother visit the venue i liked and they sent through a video of the room and surroundings.
- Band/Music - went with recommendations. We had a fantastic girl who played the harp, fiddle, grand piano and sang so pm me if you would like her details. We couldn't meet her before the wedding so we caught up over the phone and she sang the songs for me!

I think the most important thing is not to stress, i definately needed the two weeks at home before the wedding to finalise the last minute things such as flower choices, menu etc but you can pretty much organise everything from here.

If you do need any information please dont hesitate to PM me