Brenna Shine had just returned to Long Island from a job as a travel nurse in San Diego when she met her future husband, Kevin Rugg, at the Black Sheep Ale House in Mineola.

“We met when we walked into the bar and he held the door open for me. That’s how we got talking,” recalls Shine, 30.

The couple began dating that night in October 2018. They got engaged on November 18, 2022, during a family trip to Ireland.

The proposal was unexpected, Shine said. Rugg, 34 and a firefighter with the New York Fire Department, had told her the ring had not arrived in time for the trip. “It will happen soon, he told me, but not in Ireland,” she said.

They were walking along the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare when he proposed. “We were walking with our families and taking lots of photos and people were switching between photos. As I was walking he called out to me and when I turned around he was on one knee,” she said. “You told me it wasn’t going to happen on this trip!” Shine said she replied before saying “yes.”

The holiday was so memorable that when planning the wedding, Shine said, “We thought, ‘Why not have an Irish wedding?'”

They celebrated their wedding on July 12 with 80 guests, including 13 Irish family members, in Killarney. “I have a lot of family ties there, my father is from Cork and I’ve been there 10 times,” said Shine. “We also had perfect weather – it didn’t rain that week.”

Most guests arrived four to five days before the wedding. They visited Killarney National Park and took a boat tour of the glacial lakes, toured the town of Killarney and rode in horse-drawn carriages, two- or four-wheeled “jaunting cars” through the Gap of Dunloe, a scenic pass.

“We wanted to make it relaxed, more like a vacation because we knew it was a lot,” Shine said. “We hired a bus to transport everyone and had open bars.” Another group destination was the Jameson distillery in Cork, as well as Spike Island in Cork Harbor.

Shine said the wedding was everything she had dreamed of: “It was so much love in one day.”