My Wedding Day with Laura O'Mahony: We asked guests to bring a cake — you'd be allergic
Laura O'Mahony: When I look back on the day, I always think of Shane at the top of the church
We got married on August 23, 2012, in the North Cathedral in Cork. It’s where my parents got married and they also got engaged there. Afterwards we went to what was called the Carlton in Kinsale at the time.
We’d gotten engaged the previous year in July and we got the early priorities done straight away, like the church and the hotel, and we wanted our friend Fr James McSweeney to do the ceremony so we booked him in.
I remember going shopping for the dress early too. I went to Cinderella's Closet; the name of the shop was calling out to me. I had already had a little look online and I was like, yeah, the answer is in here all right. It was the first dress I tried on. It was from their Disney collection and I was like ‘this is it, this is it’. It was a beauty.
I don’t remember being panicked at all at that stage. I'd have been used to either being in a theatre show or directing or making an event come together. So I think I was chilled. The only thing I remember being absolutely obsessed about, to the point of despair, was I wanted massive bows on the chairs in the hotel, and I wanted them to be bright red and blue to match my bridesmaid dresses. I wanted them to be huge! You know, you go into a lovely wedding and you see this discreet decoration, and I’m not really a discreet person so I remember agonising over finding the person who would do massive bows for me. That was the one thing where I went a bit wonky.
I had four bridesmaids - two of the bridesmaids had blue dresses with red belts, and the other two had red dresses with blue belts, and they had probably the most uncomfortable shoes anyone had ever worn. And I felt very bad about it, but also very adamant that these were the shoes.
On the morning of the wedding I was very calm. I was at my parents’ house, and all the bridesmaids had stayed the night before, and my friend Jada was doing my makeup. Spirits were high. It wasn't until I got into the car that I got really shaky - and I wouldn't be prone to get the shakes. I think it was a mix of nerves and excitement. I was shaking the whole way in the car and then it just kind of settled.
My mom and dad both walked me down the aisle, and then I saw Shane, and I was like ‘oh, this is the person that I've known for years and years’. And I just remember then feeling like the rest of the day kind of went quite quickly.
We had a few personal touches on the day. The names of all the tables were a combination of titles of plays and fish (Shane loves to fish!). So for example, I had just been in a production of Spring Awakening, which was a musical, but the table was called Spring A-hake-ening, and another one was The Plough and the Carp. We thought we were so cool.
And then, we had friends from Germany and at their wedding they had this tradition that each guest would make a cake and bring it to the wedding. We liked that idea and so on the invite we asked people to bring a cake. Imagine, you’re invited to a wedding and now you have to make a cake as well! You’d be allergic.
The speeches were long; we all spoke - I spoke, my husband spoke, my mother, my father, Shane’s brother, my sister, who was the chief bridesmaid, and our best man. They were epic - Michael Collins-worthy! But I imagine, for an audience member, they might have been prolonged. Now in fairness, they’d had their cake so nobody was hungry.
We had our first dance to 'She' by Elvis Costello (I don’t know where Shane was in that song!). And then for our second dance we did an Irish dance to 'Baint an Aer' - where five women danced opposite five men. My mom and dad met doing that dance at a céilí. So we did that as a kind of homage to them.
The band were called Collage. They were from UCC. I think we stole them from a previous wedding we were at. We didn’t have a DJ, I remember being very anti-having a DJ for some reason, but we did have a ferocious sing-song in the residents' bar after. I remember being quite proud of myself because I'd usually be an early leaver, but I stayed up because I couldn't leave my own wedding.
When I look back on the day, I always think of Shane at the top of the church. And the realisation of like, this is the lovely man I’m marrying.
- Laura O'Mahony co-hosts the podcast Red Raw with Rob Heffernan. Red Raw Live is in the Cork Opera House on Saturday 29th March at 8pm.
