Wedding Dates with Ciara Crossan

In this episode of Show Us Your Bits, Alice and Josie are joined by the brilliant Ciara Crossan, founder of Wedding Dates, for a conversation full of adventure, instinct, motherhood, bold decisions and the magic of saying yes. From backpacking around the world with kilos of sand in her suitcase, to just saying 'yes' and flying across the world to LA for the Grammy Awards with a DJ friend after being offered a free ticket, to building a business as a single mum of identical twin boys, Ciara’s story is packed with colour, courage and those extraordinary little moments that change everything. Her bits are just as full of life. She brings sand collected from beaches across the world, a painting she bought after that unforgettable Grammy adventure as a reminder of the moment she stepped out of her comfort zone and said yes, and a beautiful diamond necklace with three stones: one for Ciara and two for her sons. Bought to mark a huge personal milestone, it has become a daily reminder of what she has built, what she has overcome, and the boys at the heart of it all. There are seagulls in Brighton, a psychic twin dream, a wedding dress marathon, Kilimanjaro, imposter syndrome, instinct, and the kind of stories that make you want to look again at the objects you carry through life.

A gorgeous, funny and inspiring episode about trusting your gut, backing yourself, and the bits that tell the biggest stories.

In this episode-

In this episode of Show Us Your Bits, Ciara Crossan shares the story behind the meaningful objects she has collected through travel, motherhood, business and personal growth.

Ciara is the founder of Wedding Dates, a wedding technology platform based in Cork, Ireland. She started the business in 2008 after growing up in a hotel family and spotting a gap in how couples searched for wedding venues and suppliers by date. Over the years, Wedding Dates has grown into a platform supporting hotels and wedding venues across Ireland and the UK, including its venue CRM system, WedPro.

The conversation explores Ciara’s journey as a female founder, tech entrepreneur and single mother to identical twin boys. She talks about the loneliness of building a business, the importance of women’s networks, finding confidence in rooms where she once felt she did not belong, and the power of trusting your gut.

Ciara’s personal objects, or “bits”, include sand collected from beaches around the world during two years of backpacking, a painting she bought after flying across the world to Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards with a DJ friend after being offered a free ticket, and a beautiful three-diamond Chupi necklace. The painting reminds her of a moment when she stepped out of her comfort zone and said yes to an unexpected adventure.

Her Chupi necklace has three diamonds: one larger diamond representing Ciara, and two smaller diamonds representing her twin sons. She bought it to mark completing her postgraduate masters in international selling in 2019 to 2020, after once swearing she would never return to education. She now wears it almost every day as a reminder of what she is building for herself and her boys.

This episode touches on entrepreneurship, motherhood, women in business, imposter syndrome, travel, friendship, intuition, meaningful jewellery, personal storytelling and the objects that hold our most important memories.

Listen for stories about Brighton seagulls, a psychic dream about twins, running a marathon in a wedding dress, appearing on Dragon’s Den, launching the Irish Wedding Venue Awards, climbing Kilimanjaro with women from the EY Winning Women network, and learning to say yes to life’s unexpected opportunities.

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