Cliffs of Moher Ireland :: Anniversary Session

Cliffs of Moher Ireland :: Anniversary Session
Photos by Nay Photography

Cliffs of Moher Ireland Anniversary session

I’m literally still pinching myself as I write this! I can’t believe Mark and I were able to have our 5 year anniversary shoot at my dream location: The Cliffs of Moher in Ireland! This has been on my bucket list for many years, especially since some of my family is from Ireland. When we started planning it, I had a very specific shoot in mind, and to see it all come together was just surreal. I found Naomi of Nay Photography in my online search for a wedding photographer in Ireland. As soon as I saw her images on Instagram and Facebook, I knew she was the one I wanted to shoot our session. I reached out to her and her enthusiasm about the session made me feel even more excited than before.
Mark and I drove to the cliffs earlier that morning since we wanted to do the “tourist” thing..aka: take lots of selfies and get way too close to the edge for some cool insta stories etc. While we were there I quickly realized OMG, it is seriously freezing right now and I am going to be wearing a tiny lace top and a very thin skirt for our session! How in the world am I going to do this? The anxiety officially started. Mark needed to assure me, more than once, “you got this..we just traveled to Ireland for these pictures..you are going to have to suck it up and freeze” LOL Ugh, I couldn’t believe this. So much time and planning went into this shoot, and now its freezing cold and extremely windy 🙁 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0050 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0048 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0049

Afterwards, we went back to our little farm B&B and started to get ready to for our big session (side note: American flat irons, hard dryers, and curling irons will almost catch on fire in Ireland, so you need to use them on the lowest setting while trying not to fry your hair and burn your fingers off in the process..and use them as quickly as possible so they don’t spontaneously combust!) We finished getting ready and headed back to the Cliffs to meet Naomi.

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cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0006 We met Nay in the parking lot and she brought her dad along of the ride (Oh, and she drove FOUR hours to come there!!!), and her dad was just the sweetest! Naomi knew a florist friend of hers who made me this UH-MAZING bouquet with long flowing ribbons, it was seriously incredible and I was so excited get started shooting!
So when you go too the Cliffs, there are tourists like EVERYWHERE, and there’s also a stone wall along the edges in some areas with signs that tell you to basically stay off and not to climb over. But we figured what the heck, we came all the way here for these pictures, so we climbed over the brick wall and started shooting. Literally 5 minutes in the security guard came over and told us to come back over the wall or we would be kicked out. Great. Session over. I was so upset, but Naomi assured me that she knew a secret location off the beaten path, if I was up for a little hike. Umm, heck yeah! Lets do it! So we left and drove to the other location. O.M.G. This was AWESOME!!! Sooooo much better than the actual Cliffs tourist area!

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cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0013 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0014 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0015 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0016 cliffs-of-moher-ireland_0017 I wish I could explain how much mud we walked through to get to this location LOL It rains in Ireland like every day, so the ground is extremely wet and muddy. Originally I had planned to wear these super cute heels (HA!) but now THAT wasn’t going happen! So my only other option was to go barefoot! Let me paint a little picture for you here: A very, very cold day with extremely high winds that are gusting to the point where the wind is literally “moving you” as you stand on the edge of a death defying cliff, as you stand barefoot in freezing cold mud with your hair constantly whipping in front of your face ..all while trying to LOOK warm, romantic, and in love! hahaha!

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To say this shoot was a little challenging is the ultimate understatement! I can not say enough good things about Naomi and her dad and how great they were through the shoot (her dad even kept wrapping my coat around me between shots to keep me warm!) If you ever go to Ireland, you MUST go to the amazing Cliffs of Moher. As breathtaking as these photos are, you can not truly appreciate the beauty of them until you are standing there looking at them in person. Our entire trip to Ireland was such an amazing experience, and way more than I could have ever imagined. I don’t know where our travels where take us next (hopefully Iceland!) but one thing is for sure, Ireland definitely set the bar very high for the next anniversary session!