Wedding of the Week: Rachel and Trevor became buds over shared interests and then love blossomed
Rachel McCarthy and Trevor McCarthy. Pictures: Bracket Studio
A shared passion for medieval history, music, Man United, and Harry Potter books worked its magic for Rachel McCarthy and Trevor McCarthy.
Rachel, from Cork city, and Trevor, from Kilmallock, County Limerick, have lived in the bride’s native Togher for the past eight years and it was there they exchanged wedding vows, in October, in the Church of the Way of the Cross, in a Mass led by Fr John Walsh.
Agnieszka Stodolny, of Bracket Studio, was behind the lens, with the photoshoot continuing to their reception venue, at the Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork.
Rachel’s grandparents, Tom and Eileen McCarthy and Mary Lane, and Trevor’s grandmother, Peggy Sheedy, raised a glass to their future together, as did the mother of the bride, Catherine Lane-McCarthy, and Rachel’s father, Tom McCarthy, and the groom’s father, Denis McCarthy. “My mum Siobhan passed away in April 2020 but was lovingly remembered during the ceremony and reception,” says Trevor.
Rachel’s friend Lynsey Blake was by her side as her maid of honour, as were her sisters, Sinéad and Róisín McCarthy, as bridesmaids; and the couple’s daughters, Emily-Belle McCarthy (7) and Katie-Rose McCarthy (3), as flower girls.
“As I had lost my mum during the pandemic, we felt that a small and tightknit family wedding was best for us — a day where we could reconnect with family and friends that we had not seen much because of the pandemic, celebrate our love for each other and our two little girls who would be at the very centre of the day,” says the groom.
“Rachel organised a remembrance table for those we loved who were no longer with us.”
Sean Shiels was the best man, while Trevor’s brother Kieran McCarthy and brother-in-law Tomás McCarthy were the groomsmen.
It was Tomás who helped bring Rachel and Trevor together. “I had already been friends with Tomás since 2008 from involvement in historical re-enactments, so when I moved to Cork to study archaeology in UCC in 2012 I was lucky to already have a readymade social circle,” says Trevor.
Tomás is also a talented musician, adds the groom, who would regularly attend his gigs around Cork city as a student. And it was at one such performance, in 2013, in the Old Oak, Oliver Plunkett Street, that Rachel and Trevor started chatting. “We discovered that we'd previously briefly met years before in 2009 in Charlesfort, Kinsale, at a re-enactment event for Heritage Week,” adds Trevor.
“It was over a shared interest in medieval history, music, politics, Man United and a thousand other little things that we initially struck up a deep friendship.”
They almost got engaged during a romantic break in Edinburgh to celebrate a landmark birthday. “Rachel had always wanted to visit Edinburgh, both the castle and the city, as it's the birthplace of the Harry Potter books, so it seemed like the perfect place to bring her for her 30th birthday,” says Trevor.
“It was here, on top of Edinburgh Castle, looking across the Firth of Forth, on Rachel's 30th, with my arms around her that I said, ‘What will we do for dinner?’ I had missed my opportunity — I didn't forget or chicken out from nerves, it genuinely never occurred to me that I had inadvertently created the absolute perfect scenario in which to propose!”
Trevor seized the chance when one cropped up again, at the Kinsale Hotel & Spa in June 2021: “Kinsale was where we first met, many years before, and this was the perfect opportunity and one I was not going to miss a second time!”
Rachel sourced her dream wedding dress, a Mori Lee design, in Vows, Blarney, Co Cork, and the groom and his party were dapper thanks to Morley’s Suit Hire, Cork.
The newlyweds travelled in a vintage Daimler, supplied by Mercier Vintage Vehicles. Stalks and Stems Florist, Tramore Road, Cork City, created the floral arrangements.
“My best man, groomsmen and close friends formed a guard of honour of crossed swords outside the church as we left — this was a nice nod to how we first met in Kinsale,” says Trevor.
The newlyweds returned to Edinburgh for their honeymoon.
Rachel is a florist at Stalks and Stems Florist, Tramore Road, Cork, and Trevor is a horticulturist at Woodies DIY, Turners Cross, Cork.
- If you would like your wedding featured, email eve.kelliher@examiner.ie
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