Real Wedding: Newpark Newlyweds Steven and Linda

25th February 2021 Real Weddings

On New Year’s Eve 2020, childhood sweethearts Steven and Linda got married at Newpark Hotel, Kilkenny. This is their Real Wedding story.

Tell us how you met.

Steven says: Linda and I met in 2003 as 13-year olds when we both attended the same secondary school for first year. We started going out in February 2007 and after 13 years we were able to get married in front of 25 of our closest friends and family at Newpark Hotel.

How did you propose?

On Christmas day 2017 myself and Linda woke for breakfast and took a 20 minute drive to the Guillamene in Tramore, Waterford. Linda has said she will never forget the day I proposed on the side of a cliff with wind and rain whipping around us.

Linda and I used all the time between engagement in 2017 and our wedding day in 2020 to plan our big day. By doing as much as we could as early as possible, we felt we were able to negate any of the last-minute pressures other married couples had warned us about. Although Covid-19 tried it’s hardest to massively impact our wedding day, we were so lucky to have all our plans in place and a great team at Newpark Hotel to assist us!

Why did you choose Newpark Hotel for your wedding day?

In January 2017 (right after we got engaged!) we decided to contact some hotels to see what options we would have for our wedding day. The first hotel we viewed was Newpark hotel. From the second we met Sinéad we instantly felt comfortable and were delighted with the brilliant staff and fantastic options available to us. When we left Newpark me and Linda looked at each other and said “We hardly just cracked it on the first hotel, did we?”.

We agreed that we couldn’t do that and that we simply had to view other hotels – None came close and all they showed us was that we 100% were making the correct decision to go with Newpark Hotel!

What is your favourite memory from your day?

Covid-19 is a disaster. We spent all of 2020 waiting to see what would happen in the belief that it would never drag out as long as it did. Throughout all of the year we were in contact with Sinéad and every time we instantly felt more at ease. We were limited in only being able to have 25 guests at our wedding and after spending 3 years planning the best day possible, we never gave too much thought to the ceremony which also took place in Newpark Hotel.
Our favourite memory ended up being the ceremony as everything just clicked so well. Our celebrant made such an effort to make our ceremony personal to us. Our musician was also absolutely fantastic!

There were also 2 bonus moments – We got some snow and the morning after our wedding we loved spending 30 minutes in the hot tub! Wish we had spent longer.