My Wedding Day with Sheila O'Flanagan: 'We’d been living together for about 30 years'

Sheila O'Flanagan and her husband Colm McCashin on their wedding day.

We got married on March 6, 2014. We’d been living together for about 30 years before that though.

There was a little bit of a joke in our family that my mother used to say, ‘I’d love to see you settled’. And, you know, she was getting on a bit, and we just said, you know, we’ll do this. We’ll do this to, you know, to be settled.

My husband, Colm, had been married before. And he’d been married before you could get divorced, so it had taken a while, which meant getting married hadn’t been a big thing for us. We were used to living together and all that, but then after he got divorced, he did kind of say it would be nice to get married.

I had said, do we want to mess up a good thing? But then I had my mother’s voice in my ear too, and in the end, I thought, actually, it would be nice to be able to say, yes, we are married.

My dress for the wedding was a purple Louise Kennedy dress. I’m not a great shopper, I have to say. And I was getting a little bit... not panicky, but concerned, because the date was coming closer and I had no idea what I was going to wear.

One day then I was in Brown Thomas, and I was looking at the Louise Kennedy stuff, and there was this beautiful dress with lace over satin. I really, really liked it. I tried it on, and it fit perfectly, which is very unusual for me when I try and buy anything. So I just said, yes, this works for me. And the salesperson asked: “Is this for a special occasion?”, and I said: “I’m getting married”.

She couldn’t believe I just walked in and bought something off the rack for my wedding. But it was perfect. I’ve worn it so many times over the years; I got loads of use out of it.

On the morning of the wedding, Colm and I had a glass of champagne together and then we had hired a car to take us to the registry office, just off Mount Street in Dublin, where we had the ceremony. There were just 15 of us altogether — our really close family were all that were there with us. The ceremony in the registry office was quite short, but we added little touches that were personal to us.

Sheila O'Flanagan and her husband Colm McCashin on their wedding day.

We had two readings from books (I suppose we had a slight literary theme for our wedding). I read from the final chapter of Jane Eyre, which begins with the famous line “Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had, he and I, the parson and the clerk, were alone present.” 

Colm also read from one of my books called Isobel’s Wedding, a paragraph about just chilling out, which is the atmosphere we were creating with our wedding.

With our day, we were trying to reflect what interested us and was important to us. And you know, what was important to us on the day was that small group of people who had always been very supportive of us and who we love dearly, and then just the whole day was a lovely occasion for us too. 

After the ceremony, we went to the Dylan Hotel on Eastmoreland Place, Dublin 4. Carrying on our slight literary theme, we had the meal in a room in the hotel called The Library. We picked that room because we thought it would be appropriate, and it was a beautiful room.

Sheila O'Flanagan and her husband Colm McCashin on their wedding day with the small group of people they love dearly.

It was a lovely, intimate dinner. And the table was set up beautifully as well. We had a meal, and my godson, who was Colm’s best man, did a speech and Colm did a speech, and I decided, just for once, I would keep quiet, so I didn’t make a speech.

Then a month later, we had a bigger party where we could let our hair down a little bit. We had that in the Harbour Master in Dublin as a nod to our financial background. It wasn’t a posh party. Colm and I did wear our wedding outfits again, but people didn’t have to get madly dressed up or anything in the same way as you would if you were going to a wedding.

It was just a fun, fun party. And we had the wider family and some friends there, and we have the place in Spain, so we had a couple of friends who came from Spain and that was lovely. At that party, I actually did say a few words.

I can’t remember exactly what they were, but they were along the lines of “I’m happy to be married”.

• Sheila O'Flanagan is a best-selling author. Her latest book Secrets Between Friends is available now in bookshops and online. Visit sheilaoflanagan.com