Real Weddings: Molly and George tie the knot in picturesque Portugal

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 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.