When Casper Ettelson first spotted Serena Wardell at a party in Sydney, Australia in March 2020, he felt an instant attraction. “Casper was very bold and came up to me immediately to ask me on a date,” Serena says.
The model and artist had just moved back to the city, and told him “maybe.” After spending some time together with friends at the beach, having coffee and dinners together, she agreed to go on a date with Casper, who is co-founder of Fishbowl Australia (Thisbowl in New York), a fast-casual salad chain. Soon after they met, the first Covid lockdown began, and they dated long distance as Serena went to live with her parents. “When Casper repeatedly tried to book me flights back to Sydney mid-pandemic, I knew that this was serious,” Serena says.
About four years later, in June 2024, Casper proposed while on vacation in Mallorca. “I had booked the restaurant so I had absolutely no clue he would do it,” Serena says. He had called the restaurant and planned to have an outdoor table with a view of the sunset in Deià, but it was too windy, and they were seated inside. A few minutes later, they were brought to a private table in a special courtyard, where they were protected from the wind, but could enjoy the “most spectacular sunset” that Serena had ever seen. Casper took out the ring and asked her to marry him.
“Naturally I spent the rest of the evening crying and did not eat the rest of the meal, but drank the Champagne,” Serena says. “We kept giggling about the poor waiters who went above and beyond for us, even after we both spent the rest of the evening increasingly drunker and in tears,” she adds.
For their wedding, the two knew that Ireland—and specifically, Serena’s family’s ancestral home of Crom Castle—was the perfect place for the celebration. A cousin of the current Earl of Erne, Serena grew up going to Ireland to spend time with her father’s family at the castle. “For me, I associate Ireland with the abundance of love, happiness, good food and family,” Serena says. Her father is from Ireland, and she first took Casper there in 2022.
“Nothing made me more excited than seeing Casper love Ireland more than I ever thought he would, especially the endless green grass fields, the food, and the people. During that trip, we went up and visited Crom and Lord and Lady Erne for lunch. Casper and I both joked to everyone that if we ever got married, we’d come back and do it at Crom,” Serena says. Four years later, in June 2026, they did.
When thinking about how they wanted the wedding to feel, Casper says: “The theme was simply to express who we are to each other, especially behind closed doors. All the little things we do to entertain ourselves when together. Our favorite foods, wine, music, aesthetics, all wrapped into one.”
“We wanted the day to feel playful,” Casper continues. “To step outside of normality for a weekend, encourage expression, creativity and above all the weird and wonderful.” That meant, among other details, that Serena drew the wedding stationery and keepsakes herself, including name cards, drink menus, matchboxes, postcards, and playing cards. (There was one snag in the match plan: They couldn’t bring 150 matchboxes on the flight from Australia, so they brought the empty boxes, and then forgot to fill them the morning of the wedding. “Moments like these, you look back on and realize there’s only so much you can do and plan from another country and that things will go wrong, you just have to embrace it,” Serena says.)
