Hi! I’m Patty and welcome to Rings on Kerry. I’m glad you found me.

If you are anything like I was a year ago, you’re searching the web for guidance on how to pull off an affordable destination wedding in Ireland.

Maybe you were recently engaged and just started browsing the web for wedding inspo.

Maybe you’ve dreamed of a romantic, getaway wedding but believe those dreams are reserved for the wealthy class.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. I did it. I never imagined that I could pull off a fairy tale wedding abroad, but I DID IT!

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not rich, but my past has taught me to be smart about money. My fiance and I saved up and paid for the entire affair by ourselves. In the end, we actually spent $22,780 less than the average American wedding!

I won’t lie… it took a lot of research and planning, and we did all of the work ourselves.

When I first started hunting the web for Irish wedding answers, I thought my search results would be flooded with stories from other American brides like me.

But I was all alone.

The only stories of American brides in Ireland were clearly about brides with means. You know, deep wallets. Rich parents.

So, I cobbled together all of the resources I could from the web, researched day and night, and built our destination wedding plan from scratch.

The result:  The fairy-tale wedding of our dreams, on an historic and oceanfront country estate on the Ring of Kerry, with 31 of our closest friends and family to cheer us on.

And all within budget.

I decided to start this blog to share our destination wedding story with other, shamrock-eyed brides-to-be. I’ll write about the whole process, everything I learned, and include all of the gory planning details.

I’ll even drop names of vendors and share the real prices I paid for services and rentals.

While most of the articles will be specifically about our wedding week plans in Ireland, many of the planning concepts could apply to any destination wedding abroad, or even a large family reunion in Ireland.

Either way, please reach out, say “Hi!” and ask me all the questions you want. All I ask of you is to keep an open mind about Ireland if you’re on the market for a wedding.