Rustic DIY | Humanist Wedding In A Stunning Irish Castle: Emese & Mark

Oh my god!!! Today’s wedding is super gorge. I am totally in love with all it’s rustic DIY yumminess and so happy that the lovely Emese and Mark chose to share their lovely humanist wedding with the Want That Wedding blog! Emese and Mark married in a blow your mind castle in Ireland and their talented friend, wedding photographer Ewa Slusarek of Eva Photography, captured their day in all it’s full glory!

Words by Emese.

We had a humanist wedding ceremony; one of the first freshly legalized ones in Ireland. We took a risk and had two plans running up to July, when luckily the humanist ceremony received legal status. This way we could have the ceremony and party in one day, on a Saturday, with a non-religious ceremony celebrated outside in the glorious September sunshine.

We are a Hungarian-Irish couple and we wanted to have an informal, personal wedding with touches from both of our culture and personal life. Hence the family photos, message in the bottles and DIY decorations and prints throughout the wedding grounds.

We chose Blackwater Castle, Castletownroche, in Ireland as our wedding venue because we wanted a relaxed wedding, with no pressure, fuss or restrictions. My family came from Romania and Hungary, they never visited Ireland before and the Castle was the perfect place to accommodate us all for the days before and after the wedding.

It is a unique place, where you can do whatever you want, as long the walls stay in place – quoting Sheila and Patrick, the owners. The Castle and its grounds can host overnight up to 60 people and has no time restriction regarding the end of the party. We organised our own caterers, own music, own settings and although it was a big project we are proud to say that we managed to contract local people and small companies for almost everything and developed personal relationship with almost everyone who had anything to do with our wedding business. The different rooms of the castle suited perfectly everyone’s taste. We had the ceremony on the terrace, the champagne reception in the reception rooms, dinner in the coach house, dessert and band back in the reception rooms, dance in the ‘white room’. In this way the day had a nice dynamic, never boring and never rushed. (Guests testimonies)

The castle itself was so beautiful and the day was so gorgeous that it didn’t need much decoration. The mish-mash colourful furniture and different feels of each room was brought together by the white flowers.

We put photos of our family, our parents wedding and our childhood on fireplace mantles and side tables. Instead of a guestbook we had wine bottles arranged in one of a windows with seats and asks the guests to leave us messages in the bottle, which we will open on the given wedding anniversary marked on the bottle.

My dresses’ simplicity and its beautiful lace back captured me. I wanted something I could wear again if I wanted to. This way it will not gather dust somewhere in a box worn only once and forgotten. The dress was originally a long dress with a small trail, but because I never liked long dresses and it would have obstructed me from moving freely, I asked Laima, the bridal shop’s seamstress, to cut it shorter, keeping the feeling of the dress, having the front above the ankle and the back barely touching the ground.

I walked out to the terrace to the song Ruzsa Magdi: Egyszer (Once), a Hungarian singer singing about a girl’s dream about her life with her lover. Although the lyrics were in Hungarian the message came through and everyone was touched.

My father gave me away. It was a beautiful moment.

As a symbolic gesture during the wedding ceremony we saved a bottle of red wine and letters written the night before the wedding to each other (separately of course) in a box to be opened on the 25th anniversary.

Our friend, the wonderful and amazing Ewa of Eva Photography captured the story of our day brilliantly, she was fun and literally everywhere on the day and we have looked at the pictures at least 1000 times by now.  At the ‘reception’ we had a table with the timetable of the day in a picture frame, seating chart with everybody’s first names on it. Also a framed note informed people that we are running a Honesty Bar.

I had no florist, I bought the flowers from Cork Flower Suppliers a day before and after explaining my ideas to my lovely nieces, Noemi and Orsi and my aunt Kircsi they arranged them in the Castle. On the dinner tables, my good friend Kici and her husband Christian arranged the flowers the night before. I chose only white flowers, which complemented all the colourful backgrounds of the castle. I chose gladiolas and carnations, big favourites in my family, both my grandmothers used to grow them in their gardens together with baby breaths. I also choose lilies, my mother’s favourites. The white flowers were complemented with ivy from the castle grounds, collected by the grooms siblings Hillary and Paul and arranged by our good friend Viki. Both our families and friends carried out the decoration of the Castle and the Coach house the day before the wedding following my ideas. I worked hard to not have any kind of theme, colour scheme, I just wanted to express myself and how we are/live as a couple with Mark. 

I made all stationery from the wedding invitations to the menus and all the framed signs. The triangle paper banners over the tables gave a happy feel to the whole room.

Prestige Catering from Cork provided our wedding breakfast. James was wonderful from day one. He was very enthusiastic about my Hungarian origin and I was most pleasantly surprised by his knowledge of Hungarian food. He was very creative and offered us a menu, which was unique, a Hungarian-Irish fusion, non-traditional and which didn’t break the bank. The food was served in plates on the middle of the table and everyone could take what and as much they liked. It really created an informal family like atmosphere. We all sat along two long tables, as a big family, ‘Harry Potter’ style. The other highlight of the dinner was the cabbage rolls made by my mum. The pickled leaves arrived on post! and my mum rolled and cooked them the previous day all by herself. She rolled 360 cabbage rolls and none were left after dinner!

The cake was composed of a selection of 80 cupcakes, catering for all tastes and food restrictions (vegan, gluten free) made by A Touch of Magic from Carrigaline, Cork and arranged by our amazing caterer James. The cake toppers were a Lego couple, because we both love Lego. We had created our own Lego figures while on holiday in Denmark.

Our first dance track was Get Lucky from Daft Punk. We choose it because we both love it, we sang it all through the summer, it’s happy and it marks the year we got married, 2013!

If you could impart any words of wisdom to a Bride to Be planning her marriage and wedding day, what would they be? Enjoy it and let people help you!  What was your most memorable moment of the day / evening? The unexpected speech by Mark at the dinner. Wow, wow, wow Emese and Mark what an amazing wedding you had, I’m so happy that you chose to do all the things you loved and that had meaning to you as a couple. Massive congratulations to you becoming man and wife and I do hope married life is treating you well. So ladies, what do you think? So many amazingly gorge details right? I love the naturalness of this wedding and the way our couple complemented this stunning castle venue. And how talented is Emese making all the stationery and bits and bobs herself. I know! And the lego cake topper… geeenius! Please do leave our happy couple some blog lovin’ and also their AMAZING wedding photographer Ewa of Eva Photography. credits | wedding photographer: eva photography | venue: blackwater castle, castletownroche, ireland | grooms suit: lapel 1985 suit hire cork | cakes: a touch of magic from carrigaline, cork  | rings: lilia nash via etsy | catering: prestige catering from cork Read the full proposal story… We made a website to share information with the guests and spare some trees becoming paper. Our story of the proposal is on it. www.emeseandmark.com

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