It could be straight from the pages of a bridal magazine: the small, flower-strewn church, the vintage Chloé dress, the chiselled, charming groom. After champagne, canapés, speeches and dancing, everyone was in agreement: it couldn’t have been a more perfect day.
Except for the bride — who didn’t want any of it. “When I told my friends I was thinking of eloping, they got really upset,” says Louisa, 37. “We decided to throw a party when we got back, just to placate them, but they weren’t having that, either. In fact, some of my husband’s friends took him to the pub and told him, in no uncertain terms, that they had given him a day out at their weddings and now they wanted theirs.” When word of their engagement spread, the couple received cards and emails from people they hadn’t seen for years. “They all said how much they were looking forward to the big day,” says Louisa. “I was gobsmacked. Our plans took on a life of their own. We kept saying, okay, 20 people, 40 people, 60, but it just spiralled. The pressure was phenomenal.”
Sound familiar? Louisa is just one of many brides-to-be who wanted a quiet wedding but found herself railroaded into a big-budget production. Christina, 35, is an artist. “I told my friends we couldn’t afford a big white wedding, which was true — who has that kind of money these days? — but it wasn’t the whole truth,” she says. “I wanted my wedding to be small and personal. Anyway, it backfired. I was bombarded with offers of second-hand dresses and web links to ‘affordable’ venues. That’s when I wasn’t being sent other brides’ spreadsheets outlining how they did it.” And telling friends to back off isn’t as easy as it might seem. When Christina finally ’fessed up, her friends staged a “conversion”. “They gave me a bridal shower,” she says drily. “And a book on how to behave around my husband. I thought it was a joke, but when I made a crack, one of the girls was really offended. Whatever happened to feminism?”
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Not surprisingly, many brides are wondering whose Cinderella dreams they are supposed to be fulfilling. When Karen, 34, announced her engagement, her best friend was jubilant. “But she didn’t stop to congratulate me,” recalls Karen. “She just said, ‘I want my maid-of-honour dress to be pink.’ But I didn’t want a maid of honour, and I was damned if I was buying her a pink dress.”
Talk to many a reluctant bridezilla and they will attest that the bridesmaidzilla is their biggest adversary. Sarah, 32, got married last year. “I didn’t want a bridesmaid, but my best friend had asked me when she got married, so I felt I had to ask her,” she explains. “She knew how much I hated hen dos, so I was flabbergasted when I walked into a restaurant to find 15 of my friends dressed in devil horns, waving chocolate penises at me.” Niamh, 29, delegated the organising of her hen to her best friend, Sheila. “The summer before I got married, I went to five hens, each more costly and elaborate than the last. There was no way I wanted my friends Visa-maxed, so I had only one request: keep it simple and cheap. What did she do? Booked out a country-house hotel for the weekend. The whole event — and it was an event — must have set everyone back about ¤400. I was mortified.”
So why is Ireland so wedding-obsessed? “It’s the Cinderella thing,” says Christina. “Some women have been planning their day since the age of five. Any woman who doesn’t buy into the romance of it all is seen as a threat.” Karen disagrees: “It’s about keeping up with the Joneses. Weddings and hens are like dinner parties: it’s all about being seen to do it well.” Louisa thinks it goes deeper than that: “Ireland is a very small, Catholic country. Weddings are a big deal. Saying you don’t want a big wedding is like saying you don’t want a drink, it’s just not the done thing.”
So how can a bride-to-be get the wedding she wants? When Monica, 34, got married, she and her husband chose a civil ceremony, then a school hall by the sea for a simple, picnic-style meal. “We knew what we wanted and we didn’t allow ourselves to be manipulated,” she says. “Once people knew they couldn’t sway us, they backed off. On the day, everyone fell in love with what we did. Now all I hear from people is how good we were to do something honest, that was completely us.”
It’s worth remembering that even the most die-hard traditionalist is putty in the hands of a couple truly in love. “My husband’s best friend was disgusted when he heard we were not getting married in church,” recalls Monica. “Then when we said our vows, which we wrote ourselves, he bawled his eyes out.” The harshest critics are also the ones most likely to get sloshed. “One friend never stopped moaning about how he didn’t want to fly home from the States for a picnic,” she says. “But we never heard anything from him about the day. Apparently, he got so drunk he doesn’t remember any of it.”