It’s almost a year since the wedding. I close my eyes and travel back there whenever I want to feel a tingle of pure joy. It’s July 3rd, 2024. I’m with my mother who is going to walk me down the aisle. We’ve just got the lift up from the Temple Bar cobbles to Roberta’s restaurant. We’re bickering about when the wedding procession should start. Afterwards, friends seated near the entrance will tell me they heard us arguing and that it made them laugh.
I hear the first strains of our entrance song, Matrimony by Waterford’s Gilbert O’Sullivan. (I’ve no wish to hurry you love, but have you seen the time.) I tell my bridesmaids, four beautiful 15-year-olds born on the same day in Holles Street, which is another story entirely, to start walking. My twin daughters Joya and Priya and their birthday twins Maisy and Georgia, in pale pink slip dresses and variously coloured Adidas runners, stride into the restaurant and out of view. It won’t be long now.
I’m holding my mother’s arm. (I don’t think the registrar will be very pleased, When we show up an hour late like two frozen peas.) I’m wearing what is called a nontraditional wedding dress. More of us are choosing them I will discover later from an article in the Guardian, which will make me feel like a trendsetter. My wedding dress, designed by Anne O’Mahony, is a riot of shocking pink tulle, with shoulders so pronounced they need their own postcode. On my feet I am wearing pink cowboy boots. On my head, which is shaved, there is a wig. I planned this whole wedding in a few months, having proposed to Jonny the previous Leap Day, while going through chemotherapy and the most intense, transformative, challenging time of my life. I have Stage 4 breast cancer. The breast cancer has spread to my bones. These are facts. Also a fact: I am nearly delirious with happiness and anticipation as I clutch tightly to my mother and we burst into the room.
[ Róisín Ingle: It was love at first riot. Twenty years later the fire still burnsOpens in new window ]
It’s a blur the next part, friends and family on their feet on either side of us, reaching their hands out, smiling, laughing, clapping, cheering, crying. There is a lot of crying. The chemotherapy laid waste to my eyelashes and now I hope the tears don’t wash away the fake ones the make up artist applied. It takes a while to get to him but I can see Jonny up ahead in his new suit from Arnotts, and our solemniser Priyangee in her red dress. (Very shortly now, there’s going to be an answer from you, then one from me, that’s matrimony.) This is not my first rodeo. I was married before in the 1990s but, after 24 years together and with everything we’ve lived through recently, this wedding is on another level, no harm to the first one.
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I reach Jonny, we hug and he nearly gets swallowed up by all the pink tulle. Gilbert sings a final “Ole!” and Priyanka does her thing. Patsy McGarry, of this parish, who was there the day Jonny and I met in the middle in Portadown at the height of the Drumcree protests, tells the story of how he almost prevented our union. He was “the fool on the hill” and ours was “love at first riot”. He conjures up that troubled time, the shootings, the murders, the bombs, and I worry that it might be a bit much for my Protestant in-laws down from the North but I watch them and they’re as entranced by the tale as everyone else.
The poster on the wall in front of us is from the Derry Girls episode where the girls go on an outdoor pursuits weekend with boys from a Protestant school: “Friends Across the Barricade.” In another part of the room, I’ve put up a version of the ‘Differences between Protestants and Catholics’ blackboard from that episode. “Catholic gravy is all Bisto, Protestants keep toasters in cupboards.” I want all of our stereotypes celebrated.
After Patsy’s speech, there’s a poem called The Good Bits by our friend Jan Brierton and we say our vows. While Jonny and I make realistic promises to each other, our daughter Priya sings Songbird by Fleetwood Mac. (And the songbirds are singing, like they know the score. And I love you, I love you, I love you, Like never before.) We’re doing the vows and watching our daughter and suddenly she’s overwhelmed by the occasion, bursting into happy tears. What a gift to get married when your children are there to see it happening.
[ I thought Paul McCartney had sent me a gift after my cancer diagnosisOpens in new window ]
The Beatles dance us back down the aisle because love is all you need. There are endless chats and canapés and elderflower fizz and Champagne. Paul Howard is the MC for the speeches and it’s like the best stand-up show you’ve ever experienced. The food is incredible. The staff at Roberta’s are the kindest. After dinner, Alan Betson who is doing the photos as a wedding present, takes Jonny and me outside, where the sun is shining, across the cobbles to Love Lane. Later there are musical interludes, our friends and children forming a wedding band to sing our favourite songs. Our daughters sing Best Day by Taylor Swift. And Jonny, as shy as I am bolshie, surprises everyone by singing Grow Old With You from the movie Wedding Singer.
This will be our 25th summer together. None of us know how many more summers we have left. So sometimes I transport myself back to that time, a year ago tomorrow. To Love Lane. And pure joy.
