Today on Marry Me Ink is this stunning wedding full of vintage trinkets and heirlooms and of course a gorgeous tattooed bride named Claire and her new husband James from Karen McGowran Photography.

“James and I met in our local gym. I caught him eyeing up my bum and we both couldn’t help giggling!”

I went over to him and offered him the 1kg dumbbells, I don’t think he was expecting such cheek! We went on our first date a few days later where he thrashed me at pool, bowling and “bop-it” – no letting the lady win!! After that first date he kind of never left and officially moved in three months later! One of the first few times he met my mam, she was at my house with her friends having dinner. My mam (a sweet innocent lady), tripped over and face planted James’s crotch, much to the amusement of everyone! It has been a running joke since that she has a crush on him and James delighted in bringing this up in his speech.

James and I love hosting our close friends and family so when we found our venue, we were thrilled to find out it had a 20 berth cottage at the back. We invited our friends and family to stay for the two nights before the wedding where we hosted a big party and a pamper day for the ladies. It was fantastic to be able to make a full weekend of it and have our nearest and dearest there in the lead up to our big day.

James and I are very competitive so we wanted to incorporate that into our wedding day– hence the limbo competition. We also hired a boxing machine, where the pad comes down and you punch it as hard as you can to reveal your score. There were some very competitive guests and it was only at the last hour that someone beat James! Along the competitive line we also had a “guess how many sweets in the jar” competition and the winner won the massive jar of sweets.

We love playing pranks on each other and on each table we hid a whoopee cushion on a seat. We also wanted to capture lots of silly photographs which our wonderful photographer Karen McGowran did perfectly.

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