It rained during the ceremony, it’s Ireland it’s the summer it happens, and the photos and the day still turned out great (not that I’m in any way biased). If you’re worried about rain during your outdoor ceremony, let this be your sign that it will all be fine.

Hannah and Gary married outdoors at Glasson Lakehouse on a summer afternoon, on the paved terrace above Lough Ree, under a gold circular arch dressed with pampas. Partway through, the sky closed in and a shower came across the lake. Umbrellas went up along the rows. Nobody moved indoors, nobody rushed the celebrant, and the ceremony finished in the rain without any fuss.

I want to lead with that because the most common question I get about an outdoor Irish ceremony is what happens if it rains, and it is hard to believe but it can and did provide the best lighting of the day. You definitely won’t be praying for rain on your big day but just know those rain clouds can create some really stunning photos, fighting hard here not to use the cliche here but it is sort of true.

Bride sitting on the bed in a lake facing room with a large cream doodle beside her during morning preparations
The third member of the wedding party, present from about eight in the morning

Two Very Different Rooms

Glasson Lakehouse easily has one of the best bridal suites from a photographer’s perspective with so many gorgeous backdrops.

The preparations here started in one of the lake facing bedrooms, painted a deep blue, hung with framed botanical prints, with a wide window looking out over the water. It is a calm, cool, contemporary room and the light in it is soft and directional.

Ivory lace wedding dress with long sleeves hanging from black iron hooks against a raw timber wall
Raw timber, black hooks, and no styling required

Then there is the timber suite, which is a completely different proposition: rough sawn wood on the walls and the pitched ceiling, a chandelier, a copper freestanding bath, and windows down one side over the course. It is warm where the other room is cool, and it photographs like a different building.

If you are booking a room for the morning, ask which one you are getting. The dress hanging on that timber wall needed nothing done to it. The same dress in the blue room is a quieter, softer photograph. Both are good. They are not interchangeable.

Bride in a long sleeved ivory lace gown with a cathedral veil and long train standing in the timber suite

The dress was ivory lace with long illusion sleeves, a deep V and a long train, worn with a cathedral veil. The bridesmaids were in mismatched greens, emerald through to sage, carrying ivory and eucalyptus.

Bridal party in mismatched green dresses gathered around the bride in the timber suite
Mismatched greens, which photograph better than a matched set in a warm room

Mismatched is the right call in a room like this. A single block of one colour under warm timber and lamp light goes flat. A range of tones in the same family keeps separation between people.

Bride and her father in a blue tuxedo standing together in a patterned wallpapered corridor, the dog waiting at their feet

The Buggies

Here is the practical thing about Glasson that nobody tells you until you are standing there in a dress: the resort is spread out.

Bridesmaids in green riding a golf buggy past the Glasson Lakehouse building
Transport, solved

The accommodation, the ceremony terrace and the jetty are not a short walk from one another, and the answer here is a fleet of golf buggies. The bridal party travelled by buggy. The couple travelled by buggy. It is entirely practical and it is also one of the better photo opportunities on the property, because a buggy is open on the sides and everybody in it is visible and laughing.

Bride arriving by golf buggy holding her bouquet, an usher lifting her train clear

Build the buggy time into the timeline. It is two or three minutes each way, which sounds like nothing and is not nothing when it happens six times across an afternoon.

The Ceremony

The ceremony was outdoors, on the paved terrace looking out over the golf course to the water, with a gold moon gate arch dressed in pampas and dried florals on the lawn beyond, and a patterned parasol over the signing table.

Wide photograph of the outdoor ceremony at Glasson Lakehouse, guests seated facing the lake and golf course
Everyone facing the water, which is the whole argument for this venue

Note the surface. The ceremony area is paved, not grass. That is the detail that made the rain a non event: when the shower came through, there was no soft ground, no heels sinking, no scramble to move chairs off a lawn.

Guests seated under black umbrellas during the outdoor ceremony as rain comes across the lake
Umbrellas up, nobody moving

And then the light. Heavy cloud over a large body of water is the most flattering light available at an Irish wedding. There is no squinting, there are no hard shadows across faces, there is no dappling from trees, and the lake bounces what light there is back upwards into the shadows under everyone’s eyes. On a bright July afternoon at two o’clock, that same ceremony would have had half the guests screwing their eyes shut.

Close photograph of the ring exchange, a lace sleeve and two hands

Hannah and Gary kissing at the top of the aisle as guests applaud
Married, in the rain

Bridesmaids in green seated in a row holding ivory and eucalyptus bouquets, a folded umbrella across one lap
The folded umbrella tells you everything about the previous ten minutes

Hannah and Gary in a golf buggy after the ceremony, arms up, bouquet in hand

Full bridal party on the path above the lake, everybody waving

The Lawn

Drinks happened on the open grass in front of the main house, which is where the resort earns its keep on a day with changeable weather: there is a lot of space, and guests spread out across it rather than compressing into a corridor.

Converted Piaggio Ape serving as a Glasson Lakehouse bar on the lawn, children running past
A three wheeled van, which did more for the candid photographs than any planned entertainment would have

There was a Piaggio Ape converted into a bar parked out on the grass, bubbles for the children, and two dogs off the lead running the width of the lawn. None of that was staged and all of it is why the drinks reception photographs are not forty variations of adults holding glasses.

The Jetty

This is the reason to book Glasson.

Wide photograph of the timber jetty with wooden rowing boats moored either side, the couple small in the frame and the sky reflected in still water
The water was doing most of the work here

A timber dock runs out into a sheltered stretch of water, with wooden rowing boats moored along both sides of it. On a still day the surface goes to a mirror, and the sky doubles. The cloud that had rained on the ceremony an hour earlier was now the best thing in the frame.

Hannah and Gary standing at the end of the jetty with their backs to camera, holding hands, water on both sides
Straight down the middle, which is the frame this jetty was built for

The jetty gives you three completely different photographs without moving more than about fifteen metres: the symmetrical shot straight down the boards, the side on frame with the boats in the foreground, and the close portrait at the end with nothing behind but water and sky.

Hannah and Gary kissing at the end of the jetty, the lake and far bank behind them

The couple on the jetty with both of their dogs sitting on the boards beside them
Both dogs, on a narrow jetty, over deep water. This took some negotiating.

Allow more time here than you think. Not because the photographs take long, but because getting to the jetty and back is a buggy ride at either end.

Dinner and Speeches

The dining room is glazed almost the whole way round in a long curve, with the lake and the course filling every window and a ring of warm light set into the ceiling.

Hannah and Gary entering the dining room hand in hand

Speeches in the curved glass dining room, the speaker standing against a wall of windows over the lake
Speeches in full daylight, with the lake behind

Speeches here happen in daylight, against glass. That is lovely to sit in and it is the one genuinely difficult thing in the building to photograph, because anyone standing to speak is backlit by a wall of sky. It is entirely manageable, but it is worth knowing that the room’s best feature and its hardest feature are the same feature.

Four tier textured white wedding cake with a teal dragon and pink and white flowers
A dragon, which I had not photographed before

The bride on the terrace with the doodle standing up against her

Planning a Wedding at Glasson Lakehouse

That is the day. Here is the practical side, for anyone weighing the venue up.

Book the Outdoor Ceremony

The fear is rain. The reality is that a shower under heavy cloud gave this wedding better light than a clear afternoon would have, and the paved ceremony terrace meant the rain cost nothing structurally: no wet grass, no sinking heels, no moving furniture.

What you actually need is not a different plan, it is umbrellas. A stack of large plain black or clear umbrellas at the back of the seating is the entire contingency, and it costs almost nothing. Ask the venue whether they hold a supply, and if they do not, buy them.

The thing worth avoiding is bright midday sun on an exposed terrace with no shade, which is a harder problem than rain and one nobody plans for.

The Buggies Are Not a Gimmick

The resort is genuinely spread out and the buggies are how it works. Ask at the planning stage how many are available and who is driving them on the day, and put the transfers into the written timeline rather than assuming they happen instantly. Three minutes each way, six times, is most of an hour.

The Jetty Is the Frame

If you take one thing from these photographs, take this one. The jetty with the rowing boats is the strongest location on the property and one of the best I work at anywhere in the midlands, and it is at its best on a still, overcast day, which is to say on an ordinary Irish afternoon.

Go there late rather than early if you can, but do not skip it because the sky looks grey. Grey is what makes it.

Speeches Happen Against the Glass

Not a problem, just something to know. If you have a choice about where the top table sits in that curved room, sitting with the windows to the side rather than directly behind gives a much easier photograph and a much easier time for guests looking towards you.

Bring the Dog

Two dogs were at this wedding all day, through the ceremony, the group photographs and the portraits on the jetty, and they are in a meaningful share of the best photographs from it. The grounds are open and the venue accommodated it. Confirm the current policy, then plan for who is holding the lead during the parts where you cannot.

Thinking About Glasson Lakehouse?

If you want a lakeside wedding in the middle of the country, an outdoor ceremony you do not have to abandon at the first shower, and one genuinely exceptional portrait location inside the grounds, this is the venue.

There is more on the venue itself in the Glasson Lakehouse photography guide, and more on the county and the other venues around Athlone in the Westmeath wedding photography guide.

Have a look at wedding photography packages or get in touch and tell me about your day.