Author: Stella Virdi

Our story is a proper little love story – We first met when we were just 16 years old. I was in the marine cadets at the time and my friend Aron who was also in the cadets met Steven on holiday and he stayed in contact with him. My friend Aron invited Steven on one of our ‘get-togethers’ and that’s how we met. We hit it off straight away and became the best of friends. After 3 years of being best friends we grew closer and 14 years later on Christmas Day 2010 Ste proposed! WIth Aron being the best man of course! :0)

We looked at many different venues and options when planning our wedding but we decided upon Cyprus because of it’s many idyllic venues and perfect weather. My sister got married in Cyprus in 2009 and her wedding was beautiful and perfect.

We wanted an outdoor wedding and pondered a few different options and then you introduced us to Ayii Anargyri and we fell in love with the venue straight away. It is a spectacular setting for an outdoor wedding. The ceremony will take place in the court yard outside the monastery and we are having a BBQ reception at the poolside. We are planning our wedding on a very tight budget, so I have made pretty much everything myself – the save the dates, invites, favours, table numbers, seating plan, order of service etc. Our wedding is going to be very shabby chic! Very simple but elegant. I love the vintage look and have found the perfect vintage style wedding dress! Your birdcages and a lantern candle-lit dance floor are going to set it off beautifully.

We are bringing about 60 guests over from the UK with us to celebrate our wedding and we are all very very excited!!

Our story is a proper little love story – We first met when we were just 16 years old. I was in the sea cadets at the time and my friend Aron (who was also in the cadets) met Steven on holiday and he stayed in contact with him. He introduced me to Steven and we hit it off straight away and became the best of friends. After 3 years of being best friends we grew closer and 14 years later on Christmas Day 2010 Ste proposed! (With Aron being the best man of course! :0) )

We looked at many different venues and options when planning our wedding but we decided upon Cyprus because of it’s many idyllic venues and perfect weather. My sister got married in Cyprus in 2009 and her wedding was beautiful and perfect. She had her reception at Zaffron’s and this is when we met Stella. Zaffron’s is a fantastic venue to host a wedding reception as the food is to die for & the service out of this world!  Stella was such a big help that day making my sister’s reception perfect that we chose to have Stella co-ordinate our wedding – She is my fairy godmother!

We wanted an outdoor wedding and pondered a few different options and then Stella introduced us to Ayii Anargyri and we fell in love with the venue straight away. It is a spectacular setting for an outdoor wedding. The ceremony will take place in the court yard outside the monastery and we are having a BBQ reception at the poolside. We are planning our wedding on a very tight budget, so I have made pretty much everything myself – the save the dates, invites, favours, table numbers, seating plan, order of service – you name it & i’ve probably made it!!  Our wedding is going to be very shabby chic! Very simple but elegant. I love the vintage look and have found the perfect vintage style wedding dress! Stella’s beautiful birdcages and a lantern candle-lit dance floor are going to set it off beautifully.

We are bringing about 60 guests over from the Merseyside with us to celebrate our wedding and we are all very very excited!!

We met at the end of August 4 years ago. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was out with a couple of friends in a local beer garden before I went to England for a year to complete my teaching degree. Graham was out with a friend watching football, we ended up in the same company and hit it off! We got engaged on the 27th of December 2010!

We always knew we wanted to get married abroad and originally planned for 2014 but brought it forward to 8th July 2013 about 9 months ago! Cyprus is somewhere neither of us have been and after looking at some wedding photos the decision was an easy one to make!

I contacted Stella after watching A Nice Day for a Greek Wedding and she set the ball rolling! We decided to get married in st. Paul’s pillar as the church ceremonies tend to be a little longer than civil ceremonies and we like the idea having readings and music etc. We have picked zaffrons to have our wedding reception as we both like the idea of having the place totally to ourselves, plus the pictures look great!

At the minute we have 52 people on our guest list, most are very close friends! We recently booked the Louis imperial beach hotel, after many email exchanges with Stella! We wanted to be sure we were booking the right place for us both! Stella has been a great help in our planning process! No matter how trivial or important your question or query is she is always at the end of the phone!! It is now less than 1 year to our wedding and we still have a lot of plan!! But I can’t wait!!! I am currently deciding what type of flowers I would like! I like the idea of the brooch bouquets but there are so many it’s hard to make a decision!!

As for were we met, we use to work together and we flirted for a while in the office, he worked in the warehouse and i was in the office.
He would come into the office to get cups of water at least 4 times an hour to look at me and smile, then came the flirting. Until one day his friend told me that he knew someone in the warehouse who really liked me, to which my reply was well there is someone i really like and it turned out to be James.

Because we worked together we decided to keep quiet for a while until everyone saw us holding hands along the street and the cat was out of hte bag.

We get on really well and have done since day one, but the big thing in our relationship is that we talk and laugh all the time.
James is my best friend and he knows ever secret i have got and we share almost everything.

Well he planned a romantic trip to the christmas fare in hyde park Winter Wonderland, booked up the big wheel and was going to propose in the POD, but we was joined by 2 other couples and it was extremely squashed in there and he could not find the right moment to pop the question. So the next day we was putting our christmas tree up in our flat and he started to panic and felt that the timing was not right, so that was another day down.

I of course was wondering why everyone was calling me to see how the winter wonderland was, they all knew that he was going to propose.

But on the Monday he came home from work walked into the bedroom with pink roses my favorite and got down on one knee and asked the question.

I then cried and jumped into his arms and obviously said yes.

We choose Cyprus because we wanted to get married abroad and i was researching where and Cyprus appeared with information about Aphrodite goddess of love and we fell in love with it.

We are going out 5 Years and met in our local pub called “The farmers Home”. We dated a few times the rest is history. We moved in together after 2 years.

Engagement 26th August 2011.
We decided to go away for a relaxing weekend and Paul booked us into ‘the Europa’ in Belfast. After we checked into the room Paul produced a lovely bottle of Champagne and popped the question while down on one knee! He even asked for my fathers permission! I couldn’t stop smiling and had a permanent smile on my face all day! The ring was beautiful….I love it and Paul picked it himself.

We always knew we wanted to get married abroad. We wanted something small and intimate and with little fuss and always wanted to have our close family and friends to be with us!

Wedding Planning
After endless searches on the Internet and a lot of research we finally settled on getting hitched in sunny Cyprus. We felt that our guests could have a holiday whilst also being there for our special day. We also heard a lot of good reports about Cyprus. A wedding planner was a must for me as I did not have a clue where to begin (we have never been to Cyprus before).
I discovered Stella’s website and she sounded like an honest and fun wedding planner.

We discussed our options with Stella and set a date with her. We are getting married on 14th May 2014 in St Paul’s Pillar, Paphos and hope to book a reception venue when we visit Cyprus next spring. Really looking forward to the planning! It won’t be long flying by!

Aisling & Paul
xx