Real Weddings: Aoifa and Dee’s enchanting forest wedding in West Cork

THE COUPLE
Aoifa Smyth, talent director of The Collaborations Agency, and Dee Morgan, art director, curator, and creative consultant.

THEY LIVE
in Dublin.

THE VENUE
Inish Beg, West Cork.

PHOTOGRAPHER
Mark McGuinness.

THEY MET
At All Together Now Festival 2019.

THE CEREMONY 
The ceremony was held at a beautiful secluded woodland pond area on Inish Beg. Considering it was in October, we got very lucky with the weather as we didn’t really have a plan B for the ceremony! Music was provided by a friend of ours, the incredible Rois, and our celebrant was Sarah Donavan.

THE RECEPTION
The post-ceremony drinks and snacks were held in Inish’s Beg’s private dining room Carpa and the reception was at the Octagon on Inish Beg. The food was family-style sharing plates provided by Mark and Sadie, formerly of Pilgrim’s restaurant in West Cork.

We worked with them to create a menu for both of our tastes, as delicious food was essential to us when planning the wedding and they really delivered. Our wine selection was provided by Cork’s natural wine shop Brian’s Wines and Neighbourhood Wine.

THE ENTERTAINMENT
A local band called The Birdmen warmed up the guests with some eclectic music from Bob Dylan, to House of Pain and our pals Mark and Kate DJ’d until the wee hours.

THE DECOR
We kept the decor pared back with long banquet tables, white linens, ridiculously tall candle sticks and mismatched vases with flowers. Our flowers were provided by our pal Ophelia from Inish Beg, picked on the land, and Aoifa’s bridesmaid Ali made her a bouquet with them. We scoured charity shops in the months leading up to the wedding for serving dishes and ended up with an array of pre-loved pieces.

Dee designed cute matchboxes and beer mats for the bar using a sketch an American tourist drew of us in the Cobblestone. Our friend Niamh made us canvas signs to dot around the land to direct our guests to each part of the day. Our friends really pitched in the day before to get the tables set up, we were very grateful to have such creative people around us.