Lottie Ryan says she 'fought so hard' to have small wedding
RTE star Lottie Ryan has revealed she had to fight "so hard" to have a small, intimate wedding. Lottie tied the knot in Italy to Fabio Aprile in 2017 in the village of La Machi, where Fabio's grandparents are from. Speaking to sister Bonnie on their podcast No One Else Will Listen, she said: "I think weddings have, in general, gone off the rails, a little bit like between Pinterest boards, all these viral reels, the pressure to essentially look like you're standing in the middle of a Vogue shoot, like I feel like weddings have turned into these. It's like a performance piece. "It's not a celebration of what's going on. Like my wedding, I fought so hard to have a small wedding. I had, I think it was 80 people at my wedding, including family. "It was so difficult, because bear in mind, my husband's family are Italian, and when I say Italians like big weddings, like Fabio sister's wedding had a bajillion people at it. Personally, I just wouldn't be able to handle the pressure of having that huge a wedding." Lottie revealed that she asked guests not to post about her wedding and had no photographer to capture the special moments from her big day. "And I didn't even have a photographer at our wedding, because I didn't want to stop things to have pictures taken. I just had a videographer and took the stills, the high-definition stills out of the videos. "I had all these action shots of the wedding, but I did purposefully put on everybody's bed in all the houses that we had for all our guests, I had left notes saying that I didn't want anyone to post about my wedding on social media. "But I don't think that would go down well today." Lottie had previously shared her wedding regrets, saying a registry office would've suited the couple. In their first-ever episode, Lottie revealed: "I regret my wedding dress so much. Big time! "I would get married again just so I could get a new wedding dress and wear a different wedding dress. "I really look back on my wedding dress and don't like it at all." She explained: "It's just so not me. My hair was just not me. I hate my hair, looking back on it. What was I thinking?" Laughing, Bonnie chimed in: "I did your hair and I did your spray tan." It wasn't a matter of feeling bad about her dress on the day, Lottie said, but looking back she regrets it. "On the day, I felt beautiful, but in hindsight, it's a no-no from me," she stated. Another thing that Lottie and Fabio would change "in hindsight with 20/20 vision" was putting together their Italian wedding. She explained: "[Fabio] will agree with me on this. We did a registry office wedding with just family in Dublin two or three months before we went to Italy for our big celebration. "We both on the night of our registry office looked at each other and went, 'I would have been happy with just this to be honest'." She added at the time: "The memories I have of that weekend, bringing family over to experience Italian culture was just incredible. But, we were just so content [with the registry]." Bonnie also opened up about her own wedding anxiety as her big day drew closer. Bonnie tied the knot to John Greenhalgh on the Italian Riviera in 2022. She said: "I think because obviously my job is on social media, but for my wedding, and I think everybody thought I was going to be like that (not to post pictures online). I think everyone thought I was going to be like, 'Don't post before I've posted. Don't post anything about where we are, blah, blah, blah.' "But on the day, I actually didn't care at all. I didn't tell anyone not to post anything. I actually remember Dave Fanning coming over to me, and he was just like, 'is it okay for me to put a photo up?' And he's like, 'I can wait till this evening.' And I was like, 'Dave, of course you could put your photo up. I don't mind at all.' "I definitely planned the wedding for me and John, everything was planned for us the way we like it. "And even picking my dress... I picked that dress because I felt great in it, and I loved it. It was just as the wedding started to approach, and it was actually a lot of people saying to me, 'when are you going to put the photo? How many days are you going to wait? Have you thought about what kind of a photo you're going to do? Like, do you think people are going to like your dress?' "And I was just like, 'Oh my God!' Like, I hadn't really thought about that. Should I be worried about that? So then in the last few weeks leading up to it, I was then thinking, 'Oh my God. Like, what if people hate my dress? What if they don't like my hair? What if they think, like, my sleeves are too much, or the earrings are too big', or I was like, 'What am I going to do?' And then, like, a few days before, I was like, 'what is the photo going to be?' I didn't even think about putting a photo up. What photo am I going to put up? And then on the actual day, I just forgot about literally everything. "I actually gave my phone away to somebody. I was like, 'I don't want my phone for the day'." Bonnie said it was Lottie that prompted Bonnie to post the wedding photo of her and John on the Vespa. "Remember, John was joking on a Vespa. And everyone was like, 'This is so beautiful.' And people started taking photos of us. And I just remember you screaming, 'Bonnie, this is the photo.' "It was just so in the moment, we had just come out of the church, like we were on. John was on the Vespa, living his best life." Join our Dublin Live breaking news service on WhatsApp. Click this link to receive your daily dose of Dublin Live content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice .
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