Our Wedding Story: A match made in Croke Park

Ruth Houston and Denis O'Donoghue

Ruth, a special education teacher, and electrician Denis met through friends in Cork in 2010 after she had packed up her car and driven from her home in Scotland to work as an au pair in Ireland for six months.

The pair hit it off when Denis invited Ruth to Croke Park for her first hurling match. "Cork got hammered by Kilkenny, which I now know he obviously wasn't happy about," says Ruth, "but he kept his cool all day." They moved in together in 2012, got a dog and, says Ruth, "we just knew it was meant to be, we were so happy".

Denis planned to propose during a trip to India in 2014 but, after a bout of food poisoning, postponed asking the question until they were back home.

On March 19th, 2016, "a day when west Cork was bathed in glorious sunshine", Ruth and Denis married in a humanist ceremony at the Maritime Hotel in Bantry.

Ruth was delighted to be able to wear the veil her late grandmother had worn at her own wedding in 1952. The veil was restored by Visionary Veils in Belfast.

Ruth, determined to put her own touch on the wedding, made “everything from the stationery, centrepieces, designed and painted about 40 jam jars and put little candles in them and made a photo display of our lives using over 100 photographs”.

Denis, a talented singer-songwriter, surprised his new wife with a song during the ceremony. The newlyweds' first dance was Love Letter by Nick Cave. The bride's family came from all over Europe to spend the long weekend in Bantry, and she was delighted that "everyone went back raving about how amazing west Cork and Ireland are". For their honeymoon, Ruth and Denis went to Austria, where they both tried skiing for the first time. They are, Ruth says, "loving being Mr and Mrs O'Donoghue, it feels absolutely perfect".

Photographer: Tomasz Kornas

tomaszkornas.com

Sarah Geraghty