Part 1: Irish Chateau
Part 2: 12th Century Ruins

We met Kathleen and Aaron for the first time over coffee just a few months ago. It’d be fair to say it was friends at first sip. We’d get to swapping engagement stories and chatting about wedding details soon enough, but within minutes of sitting down, we discovered there was something special we all had in common: we were all going to Ireland this summer. Kathleen’s half Irish, so for her and Aaron, it’d be a pilgrimage to meet her across-the-pond family members before their wedding next year. For us, it’d be the first leg of a five-year wedding anniversary European adventure. It didn’t take long before Kathleen and Aaron settled it. They’d plan their trip around ours so we could do their engagement session in Ireland.

We arrived in Dublin on a red-eye a few days ago. Sleep-deprived and groggy-eyed, we dragged ourselves from the plane to baggage claim, past immigration and through sliding glass doors, looking up just long enough to see two people waiting for us on the greeting rail with breakfast and smiles: Kathleen and Aaron. They’d woken up before sunrise to drive from Northern Ireland down the eastern coast to give us a proper Irish welcome – and how welcomed we felt.

We spent the wee hours of Saturday morning with them, driving from the east to the west on the winding back roads of Central Ireland through dairy farms, crumbling ruins, and the greenest of green rolling hills. By the time we realized we were lost, we didn’t even care, because we were exactly where we wanted to be. In Ireland. Together. With them. We spent all day Saturday in the back seat of their car, driving the countryside and the coast with the sunroof open, letting the cool air and warm sun fall on our faces, and letting the bumps, twists, and turns lull Amy in and out of sleep in Jordan’s lap.

As the sun started setting, the light started softening, so we ventured to the chateau-inspired manor of a former Irish Earl and began Part 1 of what we came to do, and, with Kathleen and Aaron dressed in quintessential European style and draped in classic love, we did.

To see the second half of our time with them, which includes the manor’s sprawling grounds, and one of the first engagement sessions ever done on the ruins of a certain 12^th century Catholic church, click here.

If you liked Kathleen and Aaron’s Ireland engagement session, you might also like some of our other destination engagement sessions, like Haley and Tom’s New York City engagement session, or  Laura and Dave’s Nashville engagement and Nikki and Paul’s Florida beach session!

the GEAR USED for this SESSION…

Canon 5D Mark III
Canon 50 1.2
Canon 70-200 2.8
Entire Gear List