When it comes to big expensive weddings, I’m no April fool

On Fools’ Day, Róisín Meaney recalls her childhood dreams of fancy nuptials. But in these times of once-worn dresses, four-tier cakes and chair ribbons, she has more sense. And money...

WHEN I was young and foolish, I loved being invited to weddings. From the announcement by the happy couple, my pals and I were on a mission to buy new frocks and whatnots.

Having survived the hen party (just), we’d doll ourselves up and head to the church to check out the other style, dab our eyes at the sight of the bride, and fling confetti all over the grounds.

Then there was the free meal (well, free-ish), the speeches (fine for three minutes) and the novelty of ‘old-folk’ dancing with somebody’s uncle. What wasn’t to love about a wedding, when we were young and foolish? The highlight was elbowing everyone else out of the way to catch the bouquet — although I don’t believe I ever caught one.

The years passed, and the wedding invitations popped up every so often, like daisies on a lawn.

I’m not sure when the rot set in, and they began to look more like dandelions than daisies — maybe around the time my last pal was walking up the aisle to where her beloved waited with a ring.

All my other girlfriends were there, with husbands they’d made earlier, and I sat unaccompanied, wearing green silk and a slightly forced smile, as I dabbed the mandatory tears away.

All through the rest of the day, I felt vaguely like someone who’d been left standing at the train station, waving goodbye to everyone else as they sped off to happy-ever-after land. Not to worry, I thought, my day out was yet to come; my prince was just taking the scenic route.

But more years passed and no man dropped down on one knee to ask me to share the rest of his life. The longer it went on not happening, the more my antipathy for weddings grew.

The arrival of an invitation — a thankfully less regular occurrence once most of my friends were hitched — was accompanied by a sinking of the heart.

What, after all, was so wonderful about weddings? Weren’t they long and boring, and wasn’t the meal, when it eventually arrived, only so-so, and didn’t the speeches always last far longer than they should?

Who, in their right minds, would actually look forward to attending such an occasion, apart from the bride herself — and, presumably, albeit to a lesser extent, maybe, the groom?

Then there was the stress of the wedding planning and preparation, all the horror stories of families falling out, bridezillas having meltdowns, and future mothers-in-law trying to muscle in.

And the diplomatic minefield to be negotiated, the third cousins, once removed, who must be invited because they sent an invite to the second lad’s ordination — and didn’t Peadar and Hilda come to granny’s funeral, all the way from Sligo?

Not to mention the horrendous expense, from the dress, to be worn once, to the flowers that wilt before the band starts up, to the ribbons on the chair backs that must match exactly the icing on the four-tier cake that nobody eats.

Anyone reading this will be thinking bitter old spinster — but, in fact, I’m the soppiest of romantics, and it’s just the actual Irish wedding, the whole palaver of it, to which I’ve grown allergic. If I were getting married — and despite the increasingly remote possibility of that happening,

I can’t bring myself to rule it out — I would fly with the lucky man to Italy. We’d each bring a couple of pals, and any immediate family who cared to come along, and we’d do the business in a tiny old church, maybe in Tuscany, with the locals looking on. I’d wear a new frock, any colour except white or ivory, and whoever had a camera would take a few snaps, and whoever felt like it could sing.

We’d have pasta afterwards in the priest’s cousin’s restaurant (they all have cousins with restaurants) and we’d wash it down with plenty of vino, and nobody at all would make a speech. After a few days, we’d wave goodbye to everyone else and spend the rest of the week being Mr and Mrs all by ourselves. Perfetto.

I sense a few more wedding invitations in the offing: my niece and nephews are approaching that dangerous age. I’m planning to wear purple and flirt shamefully with every man under 80. This getting older lark has to have some compensations.

And the irony of ironies? My latest book opens with an Irish wedding.

Róisín Meaney’s After the Wedding is published on April 2 by Hachette Books Ireland