A brand new issue of VIP Magazine has hit shelves today and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. We’ve got an issue filled with incredible beauty and fashion content as well as some interesting interviews all about love stories, dream careers, change and the environmental crisis we’ve found ourselves caught in.
This month’s cover star’s love story is a special one, the kind you read about in books and see in movies. Ryan Andrews and Michaela O’Neill tied the knot in a beautiful ceremony in Spain. VIP got the chance to catch up with the newlyweds from the beach in their only interview, filling us in on every incredible detail of the most special day of their lives.
Having been together since 15 years of age, it’s only right that Ryan and Michaela’s wedding was the most magical day of their lives. The pair married in front of 55 of their closest friends and family members during a heartfelt and intimate ceremony at Son Marroig; a mansion along the idyllic coastline of Deià, Mallorca. To make the day more special and intimate Ryan took on the role of wedding planner as well as groom.
He said: “I wanted to make it the best day of our lives, the day Michaela deserved.”
Adding: “I was basically the wedding planner. I picked every chair, every napkin, every light. The venue is a palace and you’ve to take it over for the day, bringing in every single thing as it is otherwise empty. It was a big undertaking but worth it.”
As they had already signed their marriage papers back in Dublin earlier this year the couple decided they would spend the night before the wedding together before parting on the morning of the wedding to get ready separately.
The pair agreed, going their separate ways the morning of the wedding was the best thing they could have done. Michaela said: “I couldn’t have imagined being with anyone else on the morning of the wedding. My mum is my best friend, but I think if I was with anyone else, I’d have been trying to hide the nerves or pretend I wasn’t feeling anything.”
Both parties agreed that the nerves were crippling. Ryan mentions that Michaela was getting emotional at the start of the week and he was a nervous wreck the morning of the wedding, “I went for a sea swim and was in the water for an hour, just with my thoughts. It’s very, very overwhelming.” But, at the end of the day, nerves mean we care right?
Ryan gushed over seeing his beautiful bride at the top of the aisle, “Everyone was in floods of tears. It was her, she didn’t try to be anyone else. She was beautiful, elegant and just incredible.” Many brides take months and months to find a dress they love and feel comfortable in but for Michaela, it was the opposite – she found it on the first go, when she went to see what styles she might like. “I was in the dressing room and my mum was going through the rails and picked this one out. I put it on and before I even walked out of the dressing room, I knew that was it.”
It seems Ryan has decided that this will be the end of his budding career in wedding planning, “I am retiring from wedding planning, I’ll never do it again and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone else” he says with a laugh.
We also got the chance to chat to the jumper and the jockey, Ali Keating and her boyfriend Mikey Sheehy as Ali gets ready to compete in the 2023 Longines Dublin Horse Show. The young horse whisperer invited VIP down to Rowanstown Stud in Kildare to meet Mikey and Ali’s horse Captain who she will be jumping with, in this year’s Dublin Horse Show.
Like any sport, show jumping wants the best of the best to qualify for the prestigious Dublin event so they make all of the qualifiers extremely difficult, Ali explains. She says: “I tried to qualify the same horse last year; I went to all four qualifiers and missed out.”
The 17-year-old has just finished her Leaving Cert which she says was only possible because of her mum who looked after and prepped the horses while Ali was at school and studying getting them ready for her to ride when she got home. She says: “We had someone to ride Captain so that he was kept busy while I was doing my exams.”
Ali tells us her equestrian love affair began when she sat on her first pony aged six. She then got her first pony at 12 and the rest is history. “Mam grew up in Kildare and was always surrounded by horses,” she says. “Then when she went to college at 17, she had to give them up and pretty much never sat on another horse again until I got my first pony.”
Chatting about how terrifying a fall can be, particularly her boyfriend Mikey’s falls – he’s broken his neck and fractured his skull on two separate occasions – she says: ” I don’t know what happens after you’ve had a knock, it’s like you forget about the pain and power through because of the love for horses.”
Diving in, Ali tells us she likes that her siblings are on different paths professionally to her. They’re all very different as people and have their separate things going on but Ali says it’s lovely to “watch everyone grow and find their own passions”.
She says that she enjoys having a large blended family because they’ve all learned so much from each other. She says: “It’s definitely a full dinner table and it’s hard to get a word in but, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Irish designer Emma Manley sat down with Vip Magazine’s Editor Bianca Luykx to chat about reshaping dreams and all about her vibrant new Manley collection for 2023.
Life is pretty different for Emma and her husband Eoin since we last chatted to them six years ago. While they’re still funky and still young they now live in Castleknock instead of Kilmainham and have three tiny little men – Tadgh, 4, Dainín, 2, and Barach, 1 – taking up their time. Balancing parenting three young ones and running her own label is Emma’s latest project. She says: “I loved our previous life, we had a great life and we still do; it’s just a little bit different!”
Despite her busyness, Emma still had homemade brown bread and protein balls made for VIP’s arrival at their Castleknock home. She says that if she didn’t run a tight ship at home “everything would absolutely fall apart!”
Chatting about reframing how she works given where the young mother is at in her life, Emma says she’s been reframing everything for the last four years. Originally her idea of success as a designer was showing at the two of the major fashion events of the year – Paris and Milan fashion weeks – now though, she says: “I think success is more about being able to run a business and have something that is my own.”
Back as a fledgeling in the design world Emma interned with some of the biggest names in fashion including VPL in New York and Alexander McQueen in London she says she doesn’t regret those dreams in the slightest but as she’s grown older her dream has changed, leaning more towards sustainability and mindfulness. She says: “It’s not that I’m in the business that long but honestly, now, I’m just so much more mindful of the process that needs to be gone through in order to create a garment.”
Surf Star, Marine Social Scientist and Author Dr. Easkey Britton is a name many worship. She was born to surf; she’s quite literally named after a famed surf break off the coast of Sligo. She was plonked on a surfboard before she could even walk and was well able to surf by the age of four as a result. At 12 she was part of a surf team and is now a five-time Irish National Surfing champ.
Her role in the marine science world as well as her surfing background are making her extra interested and more than a little terrified of the marine heatwave that has taken over our earth’s bodies of water. Easkey tells VIP that she’s delighted Irish MEPs have finally voted to save the Nature Restoration Law, a European Parliament piece of legislation which seeks to restore the health of Europe’s natural habitats, more than 80 percent of which are deemed to be in poor health. “It’s crazy to think it took so much people power and community-based action to lobby the MEPs to keep this legislation alive,” she tells us.
Discussing the role of cold water therapy or blue water therapy as she calls it, in our lives Easkey says what is really required to help the planet is an entire cultural shift. “We live very separate lives as humans from the rest of the natural planet. In essence, this may have been what made our oceans sick. We have cut ourselves off from nature.”
Adding to her new stage in life Easkey has just welcomed twins into the world with her partner, who is also a surfer, a relationship she says would be challenging without the shared connection to the ocean, She says the waves are like an addiction in her family. “There haven’t been waves for weeks and weeks here and you start to get withdrawal symptoms,” she says. “I get more irritable, edgy and moody! Getting back in the sea is like a reset.”
We also have a whole host of beauty, fashion and lifestyle content for you to enjoy including all the hair bond building buzz and a look inside Irish influencer Louise Cooney’s beauty bag, to four ways you can rock denim and top tips from our editor on getting ready for back to school, so make sure to pick up your copy in-store now!
