My Wedding Day with Neven Maguire: 'It was a feeling I've never forgotten'

We got married on December 23, 2005. We used to close the restaurant in January so we were kind of suiting ourselves that we could go away on a nice honeymoon after the wedding for about six weeks to Australia and New Zealand.

We got married in the Nuremore Hotel in Carrickmacross in Monaghan, an excellent hotel, which has since closed down. There was a very, very good chef there at the time called Raymond McArdle. He was a friend of mine, and I have a lot of respect for him, and he was at least part of the reason we chose that hotel.

We had the ceremony in Boho, Co. Fermanagh, in what was Imelda’s local church. Boho is literally 20 minutes from where I grew up. I always joke that I shopped local for food and for love.

We had a big enough wedding of around 300 guests. I have a big family; I’m one of nine children, and Imelda, though she’s an only child herself, has a large extended family. And, you know, we had invited lots of our friends and of course, our staff at the restaurant. I was teaching in Fermanagh College as well at the time so I had a lot of work colleagues there. We also had people like Mary Kennedy and Marty Whelan, who we’d grown close to over the years, at the wedding.

For the wedding organisation, I have to give a lot of credit to Imelda. She has a great attention to detail, but likes things done nice and simply, with no fuss. She handwrote all the wedding invites and created the mass booklets herself.

She got her dress locally, in Enniskillen. And you know, Imelda is such a beautiful lady, she doesn’t need too much, so the dress was simple and elegant. Her bridesmaids were two young girls she used to mind when she lived in Boston, and then one of her best friends from Omagh. I had my twin David as my best man and my other brothers were my groomsmen.

The morning of the wedding was quite frosty. I remember getting ready on the morning, and my heart was beating so fast. And then when I was waiting for Imelda at the church, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, it was beating so fast. It was a mixture of excitement and nerves and a bit of everything. It was a feeling I’ve never forgotten, actually.

Neven Maguire and Imelda: "Imelda is such a beautiful lady, she doesn’t need too much, so the dress was simple and elegant."

My dad had passed away a few years before the wedding. I was very close to my parents, and not having my dad there on the day was a huge void. But we remembered him throughout the day, and of course, we mentioned him in the speeches. Both of Imelda’s parents were there, and I would say it was a very proud day for them, you know, their only child getting married.

After the speeches, we had the meal. Obviously, the food was so important to us, and we wanted a meal that was nice and tasty but also felt special. We had choices for each course with options like wild sea bass and a fillet of beef, and we did a his and hers dessert option — so for the women we had a chocolate fondant and the men had a Christmas pudding parfait. We really put a lot of thought into the food, and to the wine — we had two Spanish wines: An Albarino and a rioja.

The flowers were also beautiful on the day. Obviously, with the wedding being so close to Christmas, there was a festive feel to them, and the florist also incorporated apples and pears into the floral arrangements, which were just lovely.

For the evening, then we had a band from Donegal and a DJ after that. Our first dance was to Cherish by Kool & The Gang. Our wedding photographer stayed with us for the whole night, up until 1am, he went above and beyond for us. We had a big group of staff from the restaurant arrive for the evening part of the day so we put on a bus for them from the restaurant, and that was great to have them there.

I’m not a big drinker, really but we stayed up late enough, having a great time. We were conscious that it was a frosty night and for guests who weren’t staying in the hotel, we were making sure they could get home OK. For those of us staying in the hotel, we all went back to the residents’ bar and had great craic. I think we went to bed around 3.30am.

Afterwards then, we stayed at the hotel for Christmas Day. Our families came down, and we had lunch there with the whole of my family and Imelda’s too, and it was so nice. There must have been 30 of us for Christmas lunch.

• Neven’s Ulster Food Tour begins on Wednesday, September 3, on RTÉ One at 8.30pm and runs for six weeks.