Ashford Castle, Ireland wedding / by Ryan Brenizer

It's hard to overstate the beauty of Ashford Castle: It was something so profound that Casey knew she had to share it with her friends and family, even though absolutely none of them, Casey and Ford included, live in Ireland. But maybe, for a second, let's not put it center-stage. Let's focus on the bonds that made Casey and Ford plan a complicated multi-day celebration in an Irish castle just to show their friends and family a good time, and the bonds that made so many of these friends and family show up that they completely sold out the castle.

And it's not a small castle.

Ireland is an incredibly gorgeous country -- the cliches are true. There are colors of green that don't exist anywhere else, times when you have to turn down the saturation in your camera just so reality doesn't look fake. But, of course, it comes with a lot of what the Irish call "soft" weather: Rain, and a lot of it.

So yes, it rained on this wedding, but … well, all you need to know about the mood is that, after days of carousing together, there was enough joyful energy left that festivities were still going strong by sunrise.

Thank you to Olivia Buckley for her fantastic planning work, making a wet, complicated event come out perfectly, and to Casey and Ford for kindly planning their Ireland wedding just at the right time for our "working honeymoon" in the best place we could imagine.