Séamas O'Reilly: On the good and bad old days of Irish weddings
Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan
Some time back in Ireland for my sister’s wedding last week meant seeing a lot of family for the first time in a while. It also meant re-introducing myself to the joys of a family wedding on home soil, as we’d not had one in Derry for nearly a decade. Like all modern weddings, it was filled with bespoke flourishes and personal touches, which meant it felt almost nothing like the weddings I went to when I was my son’s age.
As a child, the weddings I went to were generally all the same. Not a humanist ceremony bursting with individual traits, but a template Catholic service in a church that was close enough to the large, carvery-friendly building in the countryside, where the reception would be held. There, adults would mill around shaking hands with people they’d known all their lives and hadn’t seen in years, but say so little of consequence it was as if they were aliens pretending to be people; slapping backs, comparing travel times and distances, and saying how well the bride, groom, parents, the venue, and each other, looked.
The weather, and recent illnesses, would gain liberal mention, in that age-old flurry of dog whistles designed to clear the room of any child not surgically attached to their nearest adult. As such, every minor in the building was legally obliged to run around and out of sight as fast as possible to see what treats were held in store by this big, fancy building that had deep, thick carpets and smelled of gravy.
Older cousins congregated in quiet corners, since they were above the insult of actually playing with their younger relatives, but still too young to voluntarily subject themselves to the tedium of adults.
The pre-phone/tablet times were truly a dark age of adolescent boredom, so anyone aged 13-16 would lurk out of sight like racecourse tipsters, ready to offer leads on poorly surveilled bannisters that might offer decent sliding opportunities or point out uncles and aunties they thought might be inebriated enough to cough a few pounds your way.
For teens, cold hard cash might allow them to adopt a serious face and order a sneaky drink, but for the younger among us, there was merely the delight of gathering that petty, futile wealth craved by all children. Frequent sorties were undertaken in the direction of uncles whose drink-enabled swaying sounded the tell-tale tinkle of coins in their pockets, since every Irish uncle I met between 1989 and 2002 carried enough shrapnel in their pockets to down a German bomber. You could really clean up if you timed things right, levying an Uncle Tax that could set you up for life. I’m pretty sure one ten-year-old cousin founded a plant hire firm off the back of it.
Eventually, these craven perambulations would be brought to an end, either via scolding, a dinner bell, or some other lightly censorious command to assemble for the dinner portion of the evening. Adults, still immaculate in their finery, would do their best to wipe small faces and de-crumple tiny dresses, as they wondered aloud why their sweaty, bedraggled - and somehow financially enriched - children all looked like they’d emerged from a six-day coke bender after 35 minutes of unsupervised play.
The meal at my sister’s wedding was beautiful but, back in the day, food was in its infancy as an enjoyable substance, so dinner was of the beef-or-lamb variety, albeit with a spread of cocktail sausages and chips for the younger kids. In contrast to the crying engendered by last week’s round of tasteful, emotional speeches, my childhood memories of this portion of the evening were that they always lasted about a fortnight, and were filled with jokes I didn’t get, about people I had never heard of.
Then, a room filled with suited family and friends would laugh and grow steadily less steady by the time a cake was cut, before a live band played an hour-long medley of pop/showband hits, followed by a DJ who looked basically identical to the priest who performed the ceremony, closing out the evening with a suite of 70s and 80s bangers.
I don’t know when the prevalence of Mark McCabe’s really started – the scientist in me would suggest some time after the year 2000 – but it hadn’t taken hold by the time I was myself one of the older teens, around 2002. As such Sweet Caroline did most of the heavy lifting in the “universally adored banger” department, and I’m glad to report it is a job it still does beautifully to this day, impervious even to the ubiquity that’s been inexplicably rinsed out of it by English football fans in the past few years. At my sister’s wedding, it once again had a starring role, sending an entire barn filled with tipsy revellers into paroxysms of delight.
There was none of the small, finger-sized sandwiches so commonly laid on during my childhood – we had, instead, an improbably excellent batch of small burgers and artisanal curry chips – but the kids weren’t interested anyway. They had long since retired to pockets of laughter and delight, crowded around phones and iPads at three small tables at the back.
Some might think this a step backward in the culture of the Irish wedding, but I was heartened to see technology advancing with the needs of wedding kids. Maybe it’s because, for all the sliding and sweating, I remember the boredom, and know I’d have given a limb for that kind of escape when I was their age. Or perhaps it’s because it’s my turn to be an uncle to 18 children now and, I’m sorry to say, I simply don’t have that kind of cash.
