Your Wedding, Your Way

Multi award winning venue. Embrace yourself in the stunning heritage village of Leighlinbridge, a hidden gem in the Ancient East.

We included some of the usual parts of a wedding, like cake cutting, speeches, and a first dance (we bonded over our love of the Sister Act movies, so our song choice was ‘I Will Follow Him’). Our main aim was to go for a big party in the museum. We had banging tunes from the amazing DJ Glenn, and had entertainment from ABBA &Cher tributes, all thanks to @musicon_ entertainment who were so lovely and really helped us personalise their surprise arrivals and set lists! The guests were blown away and danced from the first song right through the night.

What about the food and drink?

In Parisien with our family, we had a signature “Frenchy martini” on arrival, with a 3 course meal for everyone. That night as it was a relaxed party vibe, we went for a bbq style buffet, with burgers, hot dogs, jerk chicken and salads, which went down a treat in between all the dancing.

Were there any hiccups or did all go to plan? Chris left his jacket in the dry cleaners and realised he forgot to collect it the night beforewhoops.

Have you been on or are you going on honeymoon?

We’re lucky enough to have 3 honeymoons planned…….we have a shared loved of travel and can’t think of a better way to start our marriage adventure together.

Two days after our wedding we rented a pink camper van called Ken. We love Ireland and have been working our way around all 32 Counties on the island. We decided to finish it and travelling from the North to Mizen Head, co Cork we took in 15 counties in ten days.

BUT our van broke down 20km away from county 32! We have a lifetime to visit the last one.

We’re also doing a trip to New York in January 2025n to watch Sunset Boulevard, Drag the Musical & Cabaret.

For our 1 year anniversary we’re travelling around Japan. It’s our bucket list destination, and we’re enjoying the planning for this already (thank god for air miles!)

In your daily lives what do you do for work?

Chris works in the NHS and Sean is a Social Media strategy analyst and consultant.

Interests we share include reminiscing about 90/00’s pop, classic movies, drag race, brunch, theatre, and long walks that usually involve our new dog Stan. Sean loves football and Eastenders which Chris has no time for, while Chris spends his alone time watching make up videos on YouTube and trash TV.

Do you do everything together in terms of socialising, travel?

We love spending time together and are sure to check in on each other, we make sure we have at least one ‘date night’ a month, and are always planning holidays. However, we both value the importance of having our own time apart with our own family/friends, and time to ourselves, something which was new for us in a relationship, and one of the reasons knew we were with for each other. Honest boundaries are healthy!

Have you a family, is this something on the plan for you?

We do not plan on having children. We love being Uncles and feel like we do a pretty good job but we’re happy with how our family is currently. We recently rescued Stan, a 14month NewfoundLand/ Labrador dog who has been a great addition to our family, and no doubt more pooches will join us in the future.

Tell us who made your day possible in terms of rings, flowers, photographer, cars etc

Where possible we tried to use gay owned businesses. We highly recommend all the other vendors we used. They made our special day perfect!

Instagrams:

Rings - Enlander’s/Vintage

Wedding Invites/Illustrations - Rory Quigg

Photographer - Laura Curran

Videographer - emmaheatherfilms

Pre wedding haircuts/shave - High Society

Ceremony - Belfast City Hall

Wedding Lunch - Cafe Parisien

Party Venue - Ulster museum

Catering - Craft NI

Wedding Hotel - The Merchant Belfast

Entertainment - Abba Lovelight/Cher musicon_ entertainment

DJ- @mcgookz

Venue Decorations - Chelsea’s Creations

Signage - Nathan Warnock

Treat Walls - Brook Avenue

Cakes - thesugarroombelfast/away_with_the_ mixer_weddings

Has anything changed since you said “I Do”? Tbh not much has changed. Getting married was the best day of our lives and are so happy to be continuing our love story as married men

Anything else we may have missed that you may want to add/mention ???

Some tips - we had a 1 hour weekly meeting in a coffee shop. This kept us organised and meant we weren’t talking about it at home all the time, and had tasks to complete and tick off the next week!

Ask yourself why is it necessary for certain “wedding things”? It’s a gay wedding, you can make it as beautiful/unique/camp day you want, our guests did not miss the long ceremony, the throwing of the bouquet and all that jazz!

We were strict with our playlist. We created a playlist that we play in our room getting ready. If no one else danced, at least Sean and I would. We didn’t take for granted the fact we can actually get married. Our wedding was a thank you to all the brave people who fought for us to have this right.

We always get asked “who’s taking who’s name” For us, we felt like changing our names didn’t feel right. I’m Chris French, he’s Sean McKee - we’re still married and us

M ake your day