Back to black

While many dream of a white wedding, a traditional look isn’t for every bride. When Megan Smith, animal behaviour consultant at Therapeutic Animal Enrichment and Learning tied the knot with architect Michal Andruszkow at Cloughan Castle, Galway last year, she chose a black wedding dress to walk down the aisle. Here, she explains her decision to opt for an elegant alternative to white.

I could never picture myself in the traditional white dress. For a while, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted a dress full stop! Once we had chosen our venue - a 13th century castle - a black dress just seemed fitting!

I used the words 'dark romantic' when describing the theme to our wedding planner, Kate Deegan from Perfect Details. I sent some photos for her to get the general vibe we were going for - lots of candles, foliage, pops of deep reds and bright oranges. She and her team absolutely blew us away with the decor! It was a very intimate, cosy wedding with eleven of our nearest and dearest, making for just thirteen of us in total. We had a fully vegan menu thanks to Green Olive Catering, with the most decadent vegan black forest gateau wedding cake by Kasia from VeganEra. I put together a Spotify playlist for the ceremony the week before which included string quartet versions of popular songs. We walked in to a rendition of The Verve’s 'Bittersweet Symphony', and walked out to a rendition of 'The Addam’s Family' theme tune! Our guests had a good laugh once the penny dropped!

Knowing I wouldn’t find the sort of dress I wanted in a bridal boutique, I took to Etsy and found a Ukrainian seller with a huge variety of alternative wedding dresses! It’s a long-sleeved black lace bodice with a deep v-neck, paired with a long chiffon skirt with a one metre train. I paired it with a two metre long black veil (because why not!), and a pair of black vegan suede ankle boots that I already had in my wardrobe, so no fear of blisters there!

We could have very easily gone down the traditional route for our wedding; we know many people who have and who absolutely loved it, but it just didn’t feel right for us. We wanted a quirky wedding that matched our personalities where we could completely relax and feel at ease from start to finish.

Photos courtesy of Wojciech Koza.