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My name is Carly and I’m really excited to be able to share/complain/brainstorm my way through planning my fiancé and I’s weddings. Yes, you read right – we are getting married twice. I guess I had better start at the beginning.

Almost four years ago, I decided to move to Ireland. My best friend grew up in Ireland and was planning to move back, so I decided to meet her there and see a little bit of the world while I was at it. She is from a teeny tiny little town in Kilkenny (yes, like the beer!). People always joke that this town is the centre of the universe … and, not to be lame, but I guess it turned out that way for me.

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Looking out over the town

I got a job in one of the many local pubs and slowly learned how to understand what kind of drinks people were asking me for.

Fast forward to the first time I was asked to pull a pint of Guinness. A charming and very good-looking (I may be slightly biased) local named Paddy got back from a holiday and heard that there was a “new blonde one” working in the bar. He and his friends headed over and, in what I have been told was the only time he raced to order the drinks, he uttered those fateful words … “Three pints of Guinness, please.”

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I hadn’t really paid much attention to boys at the bar before then (it was going to be my year of being single!), but I learned that I had sat next to his lovely sister at a wedding the week before, so we ended up meeting up in another bar later. In a move of pure genius, he bought the pizza and chips for everyone after the bar closed. And I pretty much fell in love with him right then … but of course I didn’t let him (or myself) know that.

After a few weeks of him sitting at the bar after he finished work and drinking soft drinks, a movie date “as friends” when we ended up at a fancy restaurant, and a barbecue to which he brought two different types of Australian wine because he wasn’t sure what I liked, he took me to a Rolling Stones concert and I told him that I loved him and promptly ran away. Oh, and then he officially asked me out at the insistence of his sister (now that’s the kind of big sister you want! Hi, Tisha!), down on one knee in the beer line.

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Shortly before my love-and-run antics

I’ll tell you all about the next time he got down on one knee next, but all of this leads to us getting married twice: firstly on December 17 this year in Western Australia’s Margaret River Wine Region, and then again on January 2, 2012 in Paddy’s hometown in Ireland.

 

 

Ms Gingham says: “On the other side of the world and there he was. The epitome of “It happens when you’re not searching for it”! I can’t wait to hear more about these two … I suspect it’s going to be fun!”

Carly’s favourite cocktail: “Margarita, baby!”