My Wedding Day with Ruthanne Cunningham: I had eight bridesmaids, which is very American

Singer RuthAnne takes her ‘Vow’ and to the sounds of very her own song

Singer RuthAnne Cunningham and musician Ollie John Marland got married on May 21, 2022, after a covid postponement. The wedding was in Clonwilliam House in Wicklow.

We got married on May 21, 2022. We were meant to have our wedding in 2021, but we had to postpone because of covid, and then I got pregnant, so we waited until we had our daughter.

We had the wedding in Clonwilliam House in Wicklow. We hired the venue for three days. The night before, we had a bridal party rehearsal dinner, and then we went to Mickey Finn’s for a trad night. We had The Wild Turkeys doing the music, we had finger foods, and we met all our guests. We had 120 guests. We’d lived in Ireland, the UK, and in LA, so we had friends flying in from all over. Most of these people we hadn’t seen in two years, because of the lockdowns.

I’m obsessed with a designer called Galia Lahav; she’s designed dresses for Beyonce, and one of her dresses that I saw online I loved. Browns in the UK were having a trunk show, and they had the dress. I knew it was the one the minute I put it on. I actually got it in 2020 and they did all the adjustments. And then, obviously, we moved the wedding, and I got pregnant. Luckily, the dress still fit me.

Lily-Mae was only six months at the time of our wedding

I had eight bridesmaids, which is very American. Because I lived all over the world, I wanted bridesmaids to represent each chapter of my journey. There were four styles of dresses, but they were all designed by Jenny Yoo, and were all in the same blush pink colour. Our colour scheme for the wedding was classic: White, silver, and that lovely blush colour.

Our daughter, Lily-Mae, was only six months at the time of our wedding. She was our little flower girl. My sister walked down the aisle with her and then we had her in her buggy at the altar with us, and she was brilliant; she just sat and looked around at everyone. My two nephews, who were four and five, were our page boys, and they were dressed up like a little security detail. They were so cute. 

Seven months before our wedding, our good friend Tom Parker, from The Wanted, had passed away. He would have been one of Ollie’s groomsmen. We wanted to celebrate Tom, so we had a chair and we put his name on it, and that was Tom’s Chair for the day. His wife, Kelsey, was one of my bridesmaids.

I wanted bridesmaids to represent each chapter of my journey.

We had a humanist ceremony with a celebrant in Clonwilliam House. We also had the Dublin Gospel Choir performing at the ceremony, and they sang a version of my song The Vow, and it was beautiful. The venue said they’d had so many brides walking down the aisle to my song over the years, and they loved having the original singer at their venue.

It was an outdoor ceremony, so I was a little worried about the weather. It was all right in the morning, and then the clouds came, and it lashed about half an hour before our ceremony. Everything was already set up and ready to go, so we were panicking a bit. But then the sun just flicked on and the skies cleared, and the weather was unbelievable.

Both myself and Ollie are songwriters and singers, so music was a big part of our day. We had a jazz trio during the drinks reception, and then we had The Event Band, and they just had the party going. It was amazing. I also got up on stage and performed a medley of hits that I’d written and that went down a storm. Everyone was singing along. And then Ollie, my husband, performed a song he’d written for me. For our first dance, we have Never Too Much, by Luther Vandross; it’s our favourite song together.

The party went on ’til about 3.30am. It wasn’t too late. We had a big day two planned, and that went on ’til about one in the morning. We had planned a kind of music festival, where we had different bands performing, friends of ours getting up and singing.

At the end of the day, when everyone was chilling, we put Bridesmaids, the movie, on a big projector screen, and had popcorn and sweets. And that was great. Afterwards, we had a massive sing-along in one of the little rooms in the venue, a big Irish sing-along.

Looking back on the day, it was so wonderful seeing everybody dancing on the dance floor and having fun, because everyone had been locked away during covid, so they were really going for it on the dance floor. I remember looking over and seeing my dad, and he just looked so happy. I loved seeing everyone so happy.

• RuthAnne Cunningham’s new album, The Moment, was released on October 10. Ruthanne has also released her debut book, It’s Not Just a Song, which features advice on how to navigate the music industry from Ruthanne and other songwriters.