The Blog for Irish Brides (and Grooms!)

Ciara enters the Dragons Den!

Well, I announced on Facebook this week, the secret is out; I am going to be on this Series of the hit RTE show the Dragons Den!

I can’t talk much about it before the show, so you’re all going to have to tune in on April 1st 2010 at 10:15pm to see how I fair against the fire-breathing dragons!

Here’s is a brief clip where the Entrepreneurs are talking about Dragon Gavin Duffy..

You can see more behind the scenes videos and hear from the entrepreneurs on the accompanying website allaboutbusiness.ie

Yay, I Do!! Unusual Wedding Finds

Heard about this fabulous, gathering of all things wedding and all things unusual.  Naturally, I felt right at home!  Had to share it with you guys….

Photo Credit: Lauren Church

Check out Yay, I do…

Speak Your Mind

We all know most brides and grooms planning their wedding are pretty vocal on what they want and don’t want, good service vs bad.  Well, we are a fledgling start up company so we love to hear from users of our site!  We recently launched our new review tool and we are dying to get a few more reviews up there.  How do you find using weddingdates.ie?  Do you like the blog?  Is there any other things you would like to see featured or things we could be doing better?  C’mon guys…share it all with us, it only takes 2 minutes to write your review of weddingdates.ie!

You can also have a gander at what some of our other couples have said….

Drumroll Please - WeddingsOnline Awards!

Last night, WeddingsOnline.ie celebrated their 10 year birthday by hosting an Awards ceremony for all of their advertisers from around the country.  A glittering event by all accounts, guests were entertained with speeches from Bill Cullen and Gavin Duffy before the awards themselves kicked off.

Always trying to keep our brides and grooms to-be up to date with what’s going on in the wedding world, here is the list of winners from the night.  These are among the top venues and suppliers around the country as voted for by Irish wedding couples.  Congrats to all the Wollies involved in the event and of course to the winners!!

Venues

Wedding Venue of the Year - Hotel (Leinster)

Wedding Venue of the Year - Hotel (Munster)

Wedding Venue of the Year - Hotel (Connaught)

Wedding Venue of the Year - Hotel (Ulster)

Wedding Venue of the Year - Castle / Country House

Suppliers

Wedding Photographer of the Year Peter Rowen

Bridal Shop of the Year White Orchid

Floral Designer of the Year - The French Touch

Wedding Videographer of the YearKeith Malone

Bridal Beauty / Make Up Artist of the YearAisling Eyre

Stationery Designer of the Year Love Letters

Wedding Co-ordinator of the Year (Hotel & Independant)

Patricia Lynch - The Landmark Hotel

Wedding Band of the YearConnor McKeon Legends of Swing

Wedding DJ of the YearStar DJs

Church Singer / Musician of the YearMargaret BrennanJoanna Charles

Cake Supplier of the YearKarinas Cakes

Transport Supplier of the Year Getaway Wedding Cars

Wedding Jeweller of the YearCarol Shaw

Decor Supplier of the YearFrog Prince

Weddings Abroad Supplier of the YearDouble Cocktail

Groomswear Supplier of the YearLapel 1865

Dromroll please!!! The overall winners as decided by the Judges:

Wedding Supplier of The Year

Wedding Supplier of The Year (Venue)

Best Wedding Industry Newcomer 2009

Best Supplier Website

Best  Wedding Industry Marketing Innovator

How did you meet Mr or Mrs Right?

You’re reading a Wedding Blog, so chances are you are engaged…or at least thinking about it, so come on…spill the beans!  I want to hear about how you met the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with, through good times and bad, for richer and poorer and in sickness and in health till death do you part…

Because, though Michael Bublé is prancing around supermarkets exclaiming he “just hasn’t met you yet”; word on the street is that more and more people are meeting through “alternative” means.  So, by way of a “Social Experiment” I tried out speed dating myself last night!

A girl I used to work with suggested it a couple of weeks ago, and full of gusto and a New Years Resolution to “try new things to challenge myself” I said yes straight away!  As the day loomed large though, this week I was having second thoughts…what kind of people go speeddating I thought to myself….losers?  saddos?  desperados?  Who knows?!!  I was worried.  So much so, that I nearly bloused out on the 2 girls at the last minute.  After a quick call to one of the girls, who proclaimed if all else failed we could laugh about it and have a few cocktails, I resolved myself to go for it.

We met guys who worked in Animal Shelters, Welders, Fishermen, a guy who works for Customs, farmers, writers, landscape gardeners, and a green-keeper!  It was the most random selection of occupations you have ever seen!  While the girls who were there seemed to be with friends, having a drink or two and a bit of craic; the male speed-daters were taking this very seriously!! A good few of them had traveled for the event, we had guys from West Cork, Waterford, Limerick and even South Tipp!  Many of them knew the drill, being regulars at these events.

We all sat around the bar, with our names and a number on a badge.  You were given a card with space on it to fill in the guys name & ID number.  The girls stayed seated and the guys moved from one to another after the not-very-lengthy 3 minutes!  How much can you tell about a person after 3 minutes??  To be honest, probably enough to know if you wanted to have another 3 minutes with them…so it was very effective in helping you put a tick in the columns: Yes/No/Friend.  But filling out a little card on a person you had just met felt bizarre to me!  We all did compare notes at the end of the night though and had a right laugh - we had all had the same 20 dates!  At one of the breaks, my friend Siobhán said to me: “You have a nice one coming your way after this!”

Did I meet some nice people, yes.  Did I get some floppy handshakes, yes.  Did I have fun, yes.  Did I meet anyone even semi-suitable…eh, no! :)

Nevertheless, a fun and harmless evening.  It was well run by MysteryDates.ie and I would say to anyone thinking about going to a singles/dating event to give it a lash but keep your expectations low!!

So come on now, I’ve spilled my guts….let me know how you met your significant other - fill out our Poll!

G’wan ya good thing! We made The Cork News

Was delighted to see a mention of WeddingDates.ie on The Cork News last week, we are in great company with some of the other heavy hitters in the online community:

PuddleDucks, BubbleBrothers and Sabrina Dent all get a mention too - well done guys!

The Cork News is a really informative weekly for the Cork Region. You can read each weeks issue online here.

I-ddicted to weddingdates.ie?!

Ah, the wonderous interwebs never cease to amaze me.  Imagine the surprise when I came into work this morning and discovered that a website called iddictive.com (Addicted to Innovative, Interesting and Inspiring Ideas) had written about weddingdates.ie in its post about Online Directories with an Irish Twist.

Topping their list, here’s what they make of WeddingDates.ie:

WeddingDates.ie lets Irish couples narrow down their list of potential venues by checking availability live on the site. This makes a lot of sense – most couples will already have a date in mind, so phoning every venue in the phonebook or traditional directory to ask the same question would be a bit of a pain.

Happy Days!

Fun at the Fair!

The WeddingDates.ie team were out in force at the Southern Brides Wedding Fair in Silversprings Hotel in Cork last weekend and we had a great time chatting to newly engaged couples and getting plenty of snaps of people behind our poster board!

WeddingDates.ie Stand at the Wedding Fair

WeddingDates.ie Stand at the Wedding Fair

We also did a survey with couples and will publish the results soon, and the winner of our champagne prize draw will be announced in next months newsletter, which is going out at the end of this week!

A special thanks to my happy helpers on the day, Paul, Peter, William, Ruaidhri and Chris worked the stand all weekend and not only looked fabulous, but managed to collect hundreds of surveys and email addresses between them!  A huge thanks also goes out to Pat Morley from Lapel 1865 for providing the guys with tuxes for the occassion!

My "help" for the fair!  Not too shabby!

My "help" at the Fair...not too shabby!

If you were at the fair and want to check out your photos, you can view them all here and download them to put on your own facebook page or email to your friends!

New Home Page Design!!

After being live for over a year now, we felt that weddingdates.ie needed a bit of a facelift and after taking feedback on the site from you the users, we are delighted to unveil the new-look weddingdates.ie!  It still allows you to check availability for your wedding venue in Ireland, but now hopefully is a bit easier to use and looks less cluttered.

Would love to hear from you guys in the comments - let us know what you think!

Normal Service Will Resume Soon

We all need a break, and this little blogger is no different!  I am taking a couple of weeks off over the holiday season but don’t worry, normal service will resume again…around the 5th or 6th of Janurary.

Congrats to any newly engaged couples out there, there is sure to be plenty in the blog archives to tied you over till I get back into the swing of things!

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> Wedding Dresses

> Wedding Venues Ireland

> Non-Traditional Wedding Ideas

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