My Wedding Day with Maggie Molloy: 'We got married in our own barn, it was like a festival'

Cheap Irish Homes presenter Maggie Molloy describes her wedding day at home in Tipperary

Tue, 07 Oct, 2025 - 20:00

Deirdre McArdle

We got married on September 5, 2018. Jay and I live in Tipperary, and in one of the villages close to our farm, Rear Cross, there is a beautiful, tin church and this is where we had the ceremony.

We’d wanted to have the party afterwards, in a barn or a large farm building like that, but we couldn’t find what we were looking for or they were too expensive.

Then, we realised we had everything we were looking for right at home! So, the money we would have spent hiring a venue or a hotel, we put it in to doing up our own barn.

We didn’t have a massive amount of money and this was a really affordable option, but, also, to me, it was quite sensible. I knew I’d be much happier doing all the creative stuff myself and then winging it.

So, we sat down with my parents and made a list of every single thing we would need for the wedding. I’m talking tables, chairs, saucers, plates, and tablecloths — everything. We put the list together, and we emailed everybody we were going to invite, which was about 70, and we asked if anyone was willing to loan us stuff for that one weekend. And, oh my gosh, if you saw everything we got, it was amazing.

Maggie Molloy on her wedding day to her husband Jay

Inside of the barn, we had all these mismatched plates and glasses and cups, and even chairs. Basically, I had this idea for the party that I really liked. Do you know when you go back to a community centre for tea and a bun? That’s the vibe I wanted.

And for the food, we wanted what we called ‘a communion salad’, you know with the potato salad and the ham and the coleslaw. We wanted lots of tea and coffee, and plates in the middle of the table with buns and pink wafer biscuits.

In that spirit, I also made my own wedding dress and the bridesmaid dresses. Years ago, I taught myself how to draft patterns, and I used to do dressmaking. So, I thought I’d give it a go. What I wanted from my dress was something quite casual with a wide neck, three-quarter sleeve, lace on top, and a wide skirt. Modern, a little bit casual, but very feminine.

On the morning of the wedding, we had the photo shoot before we went to the church. Jay and I had decided we had one splurge each for the day. I had wanted a really good photographer. So, with the photographer, we didn’t do formal photos, we wanted a really nice photo shoot before the wedding, and then a couple of candids at the reception and at the church.

We had the photo shoot up the mountain in this forest behind our house. The photographer said, ‘Oh, this would be lovely’. But it wasn’t my best decision; I was fully made up, fully perfectly ready. And, to be fair, the pictures are really beautiful. But if I could choose again, I wouldn’t have trekked up a mountain in my wedding shoes.

It had been a beautiful morning weatherwise, but as soon as we were out of the church and on our way back to the barn, it started raining, and it rained for the rest of the night. We had land out the back of our farm, and a lot of our wedding guests were staying there in tents, kind of like a festival. When we saw the rain and everything, we said to people they should change into their comfy, warm clothes, so in a lot of our wedding photos there are people with their hoodies and their wellies on!

When we were in our 20s, there was a band doing the rounds in the Wexford area called The Waxies. We would have went to see them a lot, and Jay had said, ‘If we’re having a band, that’s the band I want’.

I remember, when they arrived at the farm, it was pitch dark and lashing rain, and this massive van pulls into the yard, and the lads come over, dressed up to the nines, and they’re looking around and they say, “Where’s the wedding?”

The barn was up on a raised slope and they said, ‘How are we going to get all our gear up there?’ At that stage, a few of our guests had come down to help, and we realised there was no way we were getting everything up there. They had to settle for just what they absolutely needed!

For our first dance, we’re both in to American country music, and we chose this song called Colder Weather, by Zac Brown. It’s not a romantic song, but it has the most beautiful melody. When we were thinking about it, we were like, ‘What song would you think would be our first song?’ and the both of us instantly picked it.

It was never going to be an early night; my family are the kind of family that like a sing-song, and we all play Irish music. The last thing I remember was sitting on the floor of the barn in my wedding dress, with about 20 of our guests, having a sing-song in a corner on the floor. It was the perfect wedding for us. We wanted it to be a little bit Bohemian and a little bit Irish. We wanted it to be very homely, very family orientated and not pretentious. And that’s what it was.