'Let the planning begin!!'

With all the celebrations of the engagement out of the way, it was time to get down to the important part - the planning!

Where do you start when you need to plan such a big event?

The first choice we faced was what country to have the wedding in, as we are both living in England, and all Dave's family are here. This is one decision I didn't need help with!! I decided straight away we were having it in Dublin! After all it is tradition to have it in the bride's home town?

From about the age of four I had a dream of a fairy tale wedding, a long flowing dress, a really big wedding cake and castle style church. When I was younger we used to drive by a little tiny blue church in the country which I adored, so the castle style church changed to the "Blue Church" and I was on a mission.

After some research on the net, I found I wasn't the only one that had fallen in love with the church; one of the Corrs had also got married there! I thought it was going to be very difficult to book it, but after a few chats with a lovely lady there, it was booked! The 2nd of May 2005 was going to be the big day!

Now for the venue! As the church was in Kilternan (about 20 miles from Dublin) we needed to find a venue close by. I got my parents to view different venues, as it was difficult for us to do this from England! The Summerhill House Hotel in Enniskerry seemed to be the best, and although I trust my parents 100%, we went to view it for ourselves just to make sure! We had a chat with the manager and decided it would be perfect.

The reason we chose the 2nd of May was because it happens to be a bank holiday Monday both in Ireland and England. I thought it would be a great idea, especially for our guests traveling from England. If only plans ran smoothly! We got a call from the church to say they never realised it was a bank holiday and unfortunately they can not let us have the Church! I couldn't believe it, we tried many different channels but there was no way we were going to get them to change. We had to change the date to May 30th and managed to rebook the hotel, fortunately it was still a bank holiday in England, but it's just a normal working day for our Irish guests. Can�t believe the stress had started!!

At least we had the important details out of the way and we still had a year to go. Time to sit back and relax, after all I had plenty of time didn't I?!