She meant the world to me, so wearing her special piece alongside mine seemed just perfect. My mum surprised me on the morning of the wedding with my grandma’s engagement ring she had sadly passed away at the start of 2021, so we didn’t get to share our day with her. One of my favourite moments was letting our closest friends and family know that we were expecting our first baby together – I was 12 weeks pregnant at the time of the wedding, and little Aoife has since made her entrance into the world, born on Valentine’s Day this year! We fully embraced the new style of wedding we were having though, and the reduced guest numbers ensured we were able to fully appreciate everyone present and were able to spend time with each and every guest on the day. Music also wasn’t allowed, so our plans of a folky bluegrass band went out the window. We had our wedding cancelled twice, so ended up getting married in July 2021 instead – unfortunately still with restrictions numbers-wise. The food was our main thought we’re both big foodies so that was top of our list from the venues that we visited, and Darver Castle was far and beyond the front runner we wanted our guests to remember not only that but to experience a chilled out vibe without too much structure and fuss. We originally planned our wedding for July 2020. On persevering through Covid wedding hiccups I also had the Stars in the Sky necklace, a wedding present from Dan that I wore the day after the wedding. My wedding band was the Hawthorn infinity band with diamonds, and we had a lovely time choosing it in store together before the pandemic. We had to postpone our wedding and got married on date number three – third time’s a charm, eh? – so chose to mark our original ‘non-wedding’ day in July 2020 with an Edwardian Hawthorn ring and I was over the moon to also have been gifted the most beautiful necklace by Chupi to mark the occasion.

I only showed it to him once in passing and was overjoyed that he’d remembered! I loved the unique look of it, as I’m not a flashy diamond girl and always wanted something a little bit different.Īs we’ve grown together over the years, Chupi has always marked our most special moments (including my mum’s recent 60th birthday, when we bought her a beautiful emerald ring). I remember seeing a grey diamond Chupi ring pop up on Pinterest a couple of years before Dan proposed and I fell in love with it. I was completely overwhelmed – so much so that I forgot to actually say yes!ĭan had chosen the most beautiful grey diamond Chupi ring and I couldn’t have chosen better. We have a GoPro so he set it up on what I thought was a timer, but he was actually secretly recording the whole thing! He turned to me and said, “You might want to take your sunglasses off for this” and then got down on one knee. We were walking around the lough and he stopped to say we should get a picture. I had absolutely no idea about any of it.

I remember the couple at the table beside us chatting to us saying we sounded like we’d been together for years, and it did feel like we just clicked instantly, as corny as it sounds.ĭan says he knew straight away he wanted to marry me, and went home and told his best mate exactly that!ĭan proposed at Finn Lough resort in Fermanagh where we were staying for a night away for my birthday in 2018. We met on Tinder and had our first date in Chester, where I was living at the time and had a few drinks.

Treasured moments by rachel