KATE O’LEARY AND Claus Shiko were married on August 22nd at the Unitarian Church in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, by Rev Bridget Spain.
Kate grew up in Killiney, Co Dublin, one of John and Pauline O’Leary’s five children. She attended Rathdown School in Glenageary and received a BA in marketing and French at DIT, followed by an MA in marketing from the Smurfit Business School. She works for Mindshare Marketing in Dublin.
Claus grew up on the small Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, the eldest son of Peter and Aase Schiko, both deceased, who were remembered in a reading during the ceremony by his sister Charlotte, who travelled from Sweden for the wedding. Claus was educated in Sonderborg, Denmark, and has a degree in media and marketing. He moved to London 16 years ago to work in advertising, and now works in Mindshare, where he and Kate first met.
“There is a Scandinavian tradition of having a bugle played at a wedding; we had the next best thing – a trumpeter,” says Kate. Afterwards the pair walked to Iveagh Gardens for photographs and got a cheer and a toot from a passing Luas tram.
There were several Danish touches woven into the reception for their international gathering at Fitzpatrick’s Castle Hotel in Killiney: “Whenever the guests clinked glasses we had to stand on our chairs and kiss . . . they clinked often so we did a lot clambering,” Kate recalls. Another Danish tradition involved cutting the groom’s tie and socks off before dancing, which she can’t quite explain.
The couple spent three weeks in Hong Kong, Sydney and New Zealand before returning to work in Dublin.
