My Wedding Day with Orla Ní Fhinneadha: 'The ceremony was as Gaeilge and my local priest married us'

'We got married on February 21, 2020 — just about three weeks before the covid lockdowns'

Wed, 05 Nov, 2025 - 15:06

Deirdre McArdle

We got married on February 21, 2020 — just about three weeks before the covid lockdowns. We were lucky, we managed to have our wedding with no fear. We didn't know what was coming.

We got married in Clifden. We had our ceremony in St Joseph's church there, and after then in the Abbeyglen Castle Hotel. I think Ryan Tubridy is copying us!

My mom is from Clifden, and a lot of my family are still there. I had my heart set on the Abbeyglen, I just love the feeling in the hotel, they really make you feel like you're special when you're there. We had 140 guests at the wedding, which wasn't big to us really. The venue was the perfect size to accommodate that amount of people — we booked out the entire hotel for the night.

The hotel really took care of everything for us when it came to the planning. We didn't have to worry about anything, even food wise. Brian [Hughes], the owner said “we know what we're doing”. So they planned the menus for us and everything.

Orla Ní Fhinneadha with her cousin Ann-Marie.

My dress was from Belladonna in Galway, which has sadly closed since. It was actually the first dress I tried on. I’m a very decisive person. I went in there and I told them what I wanted: a little cap sleeve, plain enough, but with some lace. And they said they had just the one. I tried it on and loved it. I tried a few others too just in case, but I ended up buying the dress that day.

The weather for the wedding was a typical February day... we had to get our pictures taken inside. Look, it was fine, the hotel was so near the church. And we were actually quite lucky, it happened to be between showers when we were going into the church and out of the church, I didn't actually get caught in any rain.

Orla Ní Fhinneadha: 'I had originally planned to wear my hair down, but when we saw the weather my hairdresser suggested we do an updo to avoid any frizz, and it was lovely.'

I had originally planned to wear my hair down, but when we saw the weather my hairdresser suggested we do an updo to avoid any frizz, and it was lovely.

We all stayed in the hotel the night before. We went for dinner, had drinks in the hotel, and some some friends came over. It was really casual. In the Abbeyglen, they have a piano bar and every evening after dinner there's always music and a bit of atmosphere.

Even though we're not too superstitious, we coordinated it so that we stayed separate for the morning. I went for breakfast and I did the whole hotel breakfast thing, and Eoin went downtown and had breakfast in town, just to give me room to move around the hotel a bit.

The ceremony was as Gaeilge, and Father Billy, my local priest, married us. We had music from my friend Sheona Ní Mháille and her sister Sarah. I sing sean nós, and my old teacher from when I was growing up actually sang the psalm for me. That was special.

Orla Ní Fhinneadha with her siblings — Ian, Saera, and Páraic.

After the ceremony we had the drinks reception, and that was our favorite part of the whole day. Our photographer was amazing. We had spoken beforehand about what kind of photography we wanted: so we wanted two family shots of us in the church, and for everything else we wanted candid shots. So a lot of the shots were from during the drinks reception when we were all chatting and having a laugh. She was brilliant and the photos she took were exactly what we wanted. She was like a ninja, we barely noticed her taking the pictures.

Orla Ní Fhinneadha with some college friends — Michelle Egan, Maeve Kearney, Orla, Emma Gleeson, Claire Hannigan, and Ciara Culloty.

The Abbeyglen is smaller than a lot of other hotels, so the meal is in the restaurant upstairs and then afterwards everyone moves downstairs to the bar. We had the band Oddity lined up and they were all set up and ready to go when we got downstairs. They did the DJ bit afterwards as well.

People don't actually believe me when I say this but we didn't pick a first dance and I can't even remember what we danced to. The band just played a song and we danced!

At some stage during the night Brian from the hotel whipped out these county colour hats, like big St Patrick’s Day hats. So we have a load of pictures where everyone's wearing these funny hats. It was so bizarre, but it was really funny. There was a conga line of everyone in these hats going around the hotel.

Orla Ní Fhinneadha: 'The ceremony was as Gaeilge, and Fr Billy, my local priest, married us. We had music from my friend Sheona Ní Mháille and her sister Sarah. I sing sean-nós, and my old teacher from when I was growing up actually sang the psalm for me. That was special.'

I have to say Brian, and everyone in the hotel, was fantastic on the day. Brian really took the lead on everything. He got the crowd going. He was playing piano until 5 in the morning on the night of the wedding! He knew all the guests names by the end of the day. Everybody left the hotel with a smile on their face.

And then the next morning he arrives in at breakfast with this photo album. He'd been taking photos and snapping away all through the day. He gave me this little photo album, full of random pictures of the guests and the crowd and the laughs. It was just such a nice touch.