School sweethearts Molly and George wed at a beautiful, family-run lakeside venue in Lisbon, Portugal. Their big day featured a mix of authentic Portuguese flavours, Irish poems and handfasting, and local musicians that kept them on the dancefloor into the early hours.
THE COUPLE
Molly, head of art and design, and George, senior bioinformatician.
THEY LIVE
in Yorkshire, UK.
THE VENUE
Quinta da Bichinha, a family-run vineyard outside of Lisbon, Portugal. Mariana was our coordinator from the family venue and is a gorgeous human being.
PHOTOGRAPHER & VIDEOGRAPHER
Inês Simões and the team at FlashUpStories.
THEY MET
We met during our leaving cert, on a night out. We were friends for a few weeks first and then George finally made the move. We have been together ever since!
THE PROPOSAL
We went to the Venice Biennale in October 2022. Venice is my favourite place in the world, but it was George’s first time there. We had gone out for a lovely Italian seafood dinner one night and it was raining quite heavily. When we left the restaurant, all the streets were emptied from the rain.
We strolled into a quiet piazza San Marco illuminated by street lamps and George got down on one knee and popped the question. George designed the engagement ring himself, an oval sapphire (as he said it matched my eyes) with two diamonds on either side of a gold band. It was all perfect.
THE DRESS & THE SUIT
It took many boutiques to find a dress that felt like me, but I eventually found the one in Pretty White Dress in Hale, Manchester. My dress is the Cyra dress from the Australian design house Madi Lane. I wanted something that felt dreamy and floaty, and not overly patterned, but also could be worn in the Portuguese heat.
When I saw the tiny 3D flowers that looked like stars, it struck me as something very different to what I’d seen before. I worked with the in-house designer Chloe at PWD to create sleeves and move some of the flower detailing around. I accessorised with different jewellery from independent designers on Etsy. My shoes are from Glamorous and my perfume was Jo Malone English Pear & Sweet Pea Cologne.
George opted for a black tux from Moss Bros for himself and the groomsmen. However, he left out the waistcoat due to the heat! He wore Montblanc cufflinks and Memphis One black loafers. George opted for the Jo Malone Cypress and Grapevine scent as he thought it matched our vineyard venue.
THE CEREMONY
We had a civil ceremony on the lake overlooking the vineyard. We had elements of Portuguese, English and some Irish thrown in for good measure. I walked down the aisle to Sky Full of Stars played by our string quartet. After all the legal paperwork was signed, our celebrant Sam Gardner continued the ceremony, where my maid of honour, Joy, read the poem “Like a River Finds The Sea” by Whitney Hanson.
We said our vows and then had a handfasting where my bridesmaid Saoirse read a blessing in Irish and George’s brother William translated the blessing for our non-Irish guests. George’s mum’s family are also Welsh and we were gifted a Welsh love spoon at the altar too by his Aunty Lin. Finally, husband and wife, we walked down the aisle to Florence and the Machine’s You’ve Got The Love and were covered in petals thrown by our guests.
THE RECEPTION
We walked down from the lake to the gardens for canapés and cocktails, with the string quartet playing some of our favourite pop songs. We had a welcome meal at the venue the day before so most of our guests had gotten to know each other quite well. It was so important to us to see everyone having a good time.
Eventually, as the sun was setting, we moved on to dinner in the converted wine cellars that are now these beautiful rustic and cosy spaces ideal for weddings. We had goat cheese and walnut pastry, followed by monkfish and prawn risotto – a fish course is typical for Portuguese weddings. We then had beef fillet mignon, followed by strawberry gazpacho and ice cream. We also had a cake, fruit and cheese buffet out all night afterwards. The food is something guests have constantly talked about since!
Our speeches were utterly fantastic. My dad had us all crying as he spoke so kindly and repeated the wedding vows from his and Mum’s wedding day. My maid of honour, Joy, then had the whole room clapping along to her speech which was a version of the song Alexander Hamilton with my name subbed in! We all couldn’t believe how well she performed it, but a drama degree helped. George then followed with a lovely and emotional speech and thanked everyone for coming and how special it was for us. The best man, Jon, then gave some funny and quite touching stories of George and Jon’s time on an archaeology dig in Europe.
After dinner, the sparklers were ready for the walk outside to the cake. We went with a red velvet and buttercream cake. It was decorated with flowers, but we had made Lego versions of ourselves as this is something we did in our first year of dating. We also had some fireworks and streamers to go off for the cake-cutting.
THE ENTERTAINMENT
We had String Quartet Solutions for the ceremony and the canapés and cocktails afterwards. We then had DJ Douglas from Floor Sensations and his energy was brilliant. We felt like he was a DJ in Ibiza and kept the dancefloor going til 5am! He worked brilliantly with Joel, our saxophonist, and he was great at keeping everyone involved in the dancing. They were an amazing team! We also had a photobooth and I made some games for guests to play as well. Shout out to Rita Vicente and Catarina Lourenco from B-Lust Hair and Make-Up! In 30-degree heat and after lots of dancing, my hair and make-up remained perfect all night.
THE DECOR
Our venue had a magical flowery cobblestone backdrop, but I created a lot of the décor design myself. All of the flowers the venue provided were from local florists, working with a palette of blue, purple and peach. I wanted wooden tables and chairs for a rustic feel and used dusty blue table runners.
I used my illustrations of lavender for the invites, signage, games and the wine bottle favour labels. For our name cards, I worked with a friend to laser-cut wooden airplane-shaped luggage tags. And, for our table names, I used different places we have travelled to before, with pictures of us at each destination, as travel was something really important to us.
THEIR TOP TIPS
Destination weddings can seem daunting, but they are very doable, even without a planner. It took a long time to find our perfect place at Quinta da Bichinha but the hours paid off when we found it. The family team at Quinta da Bichinha was fantastic and really helped us out with sorting the legal documents and recommended lots of vendors. We loved, with a destination wedding, a lot of our guests were able to make a holiday out of our celebrations. The sunshine and feeling of adventure are worth the hassle of going abroad.
THEY WISH THEY HAD
More time! We did a welcome dinner the day before at the venue and it was a great way for everyone to get to know each other. After the wedding, we invited everyone to our ‘mini-moon’ at a beach near Lisbon and quite a few of our friends and family joined us. However, we both wish we had done another day at the venue after the wedding to catch up with all our guests. We saw nearly everyone the next morning at breakfast, but we would have loved to see them all for longer.
THEIR BEST MOMENTS
George’s favourite moment was when he saw me come up the aisle. My favourite moment was getting up the aisle and holding George’s hand. I remember feeling blown away seeing George in his tux, and so many loved ones in such a beautiful setting – I just thought, wow, this is so surreal! It’s all led to this moment.
FIRST DANCE SONG
We wanted our first dance song to be the first song we ever danced to. When we were 18 years old in the Pavilion in Cork, the song Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies started playing and I said I loved that song and who wanted to dance with me? George thankfully jumped at the chance and grabbed my hand and the rest is history.
THE CREW
Venue, Decor, Food, Cake, Fireworks and Photobooth: Quinta da Bichinha. Music: String Quartet Solutions and Floor Sensations. Celebrant: Sam Gardner. Hair & Make-Up: B-Lust Hair and Make-Up. Wedding Dress: Madi Lane at Pretty White Dress. Accessories: Etsy. Groom’s Tux: Moss Bros.
See more photographs from Molly and George’s wedding in the gallery below.
Photography & Videography by Inês Simões and the team at FlashUpStories.
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