Fair City Rachel plans romantic French nuptials

Melanie Finn

FORMER Fair City beauty Rachel Kavanagh will walk down the aisle in a romantic ceremony in France, the Diary can reveal.

The actress-turned-businesswoman has earmarked 2013 as the year she'll wed fiance Shane.

And the 27-year-old has been spending the past few months getting back into shape following the birth of her first baby Rhys in December.

Looking super-svelte, she admitted she found it "unbelievable tough" to get back to her pre-baby shape.

"I really didn't think it would be as hard as it was," she explained.

"I thought I was going to snap back into shape but I didn't at all.

"There's this unbelievable pressure to get your old figure back and a lot of it comes from yourself. You want to feel good about yourself and know you look well and just feel like the 'old you'. You're desperate to lose the weight and fit back into your old clothes after spending nine months not being yourself."

The healthy founder of RockStar Tan was training up to five times a week at Beneath the Surface before the birth.

But the fact that she had a C-Section at Mount Carmel Hospital meant that she couldn't do any exercise for the first three months and had to take it easy.

She recently tried Endermologie, a non invasive procedure which helps break down fat deposits.

"I had all my sessions in two and a half weeks and I lost two inches off my hips with it, it was fantastic," she said.

She said breast-feeding for the first 10 weeks was also great for her and her baby, given that he was premature.

Rachel explained how she has a "few more pounds" to go until she's at her pre-baby weight but she's nearly at her target weight.

And she said it was great having the support of fellow new mums like Virginia Macari, Tara O'Connor, Nadine Wai O'Flynn and Jenny Buckley who all gave birth recently.

She was spotted out at the weekend letting her hair down with pals in Krystle nightclub, which marked her first time out since having her baby.

But she admits that it took quite a while to get her head around juggling being a full-time mum with running her own business.

"People don't exaggerate how tired you are when you first have a baby. I don't even remember the first couple of weeks, I was that sleep-deprived," she added.

"I was back in work by about the start of February, as you have to be when you're self employed.

"I have such an admiration for working mums as it's so hard. Luckily I have some amazing support from my mum and my partner's mum. If it wasn't for them, I don't know what I would have done."