Winning Romance
Updated : Apr 23, 2009
A holiday romance has led to the wedding of their dreams for one Irish couple after they won a Wedding Journal magazine competition.
Aidan Clifford and Ellen Spence managed to convince a judging panel they were the country's most romantic couple, and won a €46,000 package for their big day according to the Evening Herald.
The couple met on a skiing trip in Italy in January 2007. When they came back they spent thousands on phone bills and travelled approximately 36,000 miles between them in 18 months for snatched visits.
Kerry man Aidan (28), who was living in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare at the time, fell head over heels for Ellen Spence (29), from Lurgan, Northern Ireland, while they were on the ski slopes.
"Aidan was there with his cousins and friends, and I was there with my sister and her then boyfriend," Ellen told the Herald.
"Everyone was skiing while I was shuffling along and then Aidan came over and we started chatting.
"He was living in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, which is 250 miles away from where I was living. I was still living at home with mummy and daddy."
Despite the distance between them, the couple made every effort to grow closer once they got home.
A €1,200 phone bill was soon clocked up between the loved-up pair -- soon they were visiting each other, after a four-and-half-hour car journey.
"For Christmas 2007, Aidan got me present of a holiday where I could go anywhere I wanted. I picked New York in February -- but I completely forgot about Valentine's Day falling during our holiday," she said.
However, her future husband didn't. He skated out to Ellen on an ice rink at the famous Rockafella Centre, got down on one knee and proposed.
Last July, Ellen moved to Galway, considered a halfway point between Aidan's Kerry home and Ellen's Lurgan home.
As they were furiously saving for their upcoming wedding, an opportunity presented itself that would allow Ellen open her own beauty business.
"So we decided to divert our wedding funds into that and chose to open the business in Kinvara, Co Galway," she said.
They then heard about the competition being run by Wedding Journal magazine, which hosted a series of shows across the country to publicise the prize.
The judging panel was inundated with entries from couples all over Ireland. The hopefuls were then shortlisted to just ten. It appears that Ellen's carefully crafted and humorous story-board charting the romance between herself and Aidan won over the judges.
The couple have been awarded a €46,000 wedding package -- and are hoping to tie the knot by September.
"We are ecstatic to have won this fabulous prize and extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to make our dream day come true for both us and our families," said Aidan.
"I haven't got much time -- I'll have to start going to the gym," laughed Ellen.
Their prize includes a wedding reception in the renowned Parknasilla Resort in Co Kerry, a stunning designer wedding dress from Kathy de Stafford in Dublin or Blush Bridal in Belfast, a pre-wedding spa break from Ritz Carlton Powerscourt and a superb luxury honeymoon.
VeryHappyPig entered the competition but when VHP’s girlfriend failed to turn up after because she was in a huff we lost the chance of a dream wedding. VeryHappyPig still believes she was over reacting we only went out with the weekend, granted it was the entire weekend, and our battery did die, VHP would never dream of turning off the phone.
