My Wedding Day with Jenny Dixon: 'I won’t name names, but everyone was up for dancing all night'
Jenny Dixon and Tom Neville, who got married in Dublin. Photo: Justin Farrelly.
We got married on July 27, 2019 in my local church, Corpus Christi in Drumcondra, which is where I’d made my communion and my confirmation. Afterwards, we all headed down to Powerscourt in Wicklow.
We had got engaged in the August of the year before, and I had a little personal goal to do it all within a year. We were both keen on having a summer wedding, first of all because Tom was a politician in the Dáil and freer in the summer, but also because of the nice weather.
We had blue skies, it was warm, people had to use sunscreen, and it wasn’t too windy; just a nice gentle breeze to catch your hair for the photos! And it was great: My brother had gotten married a few months before us and he had the same type of day.
We ended up with around 180 guests. We had a lot of extended family and friends travelling in from the US, Sweden, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. Because we were planning the wedding within 11 months, we had a planner helping us. I had done an event with Norah Casey — on empowering women — years previously, and this wedding planner, who was a big fan of Fair City, approached me. Now I was only dating Tom at the time, but she asked me if I was I seeing anyone: Was I engaged? If it ever happened, would I consider her as my wedding planner? And so a few years later, when I did get engaged, I went back to her. And we’ve since become good friends.
My wedding gown was a custom-made dress by Paula at Tamem Bridal. It was a duchess satin princess ball gown with a sheer, lace bodice corset, and pockets. I wanted something that was comfortable and beautiful, and I got that. I had a dress for our day two event, too, which was more of a Bohemian style. I’d lived in California for a few years, so it was more along that style.
I wasn’t nervous at all on the morning of the wedding. It was more excitement and trying to be conscious of every moment. A good friend of mine, Alex Sherlock, called me up the night before and he told me to make sure I appreciate and notice every minute of the day, so I tried to do that. So little things — like I couldn’t find my wedding lipstick on the day, or we couldn’t get the car we wanted and ended up with a fun limo — these things weren’t important in the grand scheme.
On the morning, I was in the house with my mam, my wedding planner, hairdresser, make-up artist and my bridesmaids and I was really enjoying the female energy. We ended up all singing along to ‘Proud Mary’, by Tina Turner, in the house, and that calmed me down nicely.
Music was a huge part of our day. We had a gospel choir in the church; they performed a dance version of ‘Alleluia’, which was stunning. Our first dance was to Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’. We’d done a couple of dance lessons beforehand, so this gave us some choreography to fall back on and we weren’t too nervous about it. We had Steve Mangan for our reception; he’s a Michael Bublé impersonator and he was brilliant. He grabbed me and all my Fair City castmates, and we were all dancing together. We have a picture of us all arm in arm dancing, which is lovely. And Tom even got up on stage and sang ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ by Oasis!
We tried to add our own little touches throughout the day. On the last page of the ceremony booklet we had a picture of a painting my mother had made for my grandmother, and we had a poem that my grandmother wrote in the ceremony (two of my actor friends recited it). And my brother made these beautiful flower rings that he had for his wedding and he gave them to us, plus he also made a gorgeous floral wall. It was nice to bring our families in to the day like that.
There were a lot of people on Tom’s side from the world of politics and, of course, on my side there were a lot of actors. I won’t name any names, but everyone was up for dancing all night, and the sing song in the bar afterwards!
Then, the party flowed in to day two, and I had friends who had to go to work on day two, but they actually came back for the evening, which was a kind of testament to how good the craic was.
When I look back on the day I don’t have one standout memory, it’s more like a myriad of different magical moments: Like holding my dad’s hand in the limo and before we walked into the church, seeing Tom singing Oasis, the gospel choir, dancing with my Fair City castmates, our gorgeous cake. It’s impossible to pick just one standout moment. It was just a day filled of little memorable moments.
- You can watch Jenny Dixon’s twin baby girls, Bella and Capri, on The RTÉ Player’s Storyland ‘Shush’ now.
