My Wedding Day with Annalise Murphy: 'We planned a cycle with our friends the night before our wedding'

My granduncle is a priest in his 90s. We wanted him to marry us, but he didn’t want to do anything big. So we had two weddings!

Annalise Murphy on her wedding day

We got married on August 31, 2024. Well, that was actually our second wedding!

My granduncle is a priest in his 90s. We wanted him to marry us, but he didn’t want to do anything big. So we got married in a church in Swords on August 21. Then 10 days later, we got married again, in the National Maritime Museum in Dún Laoghaire.

We had the afters in the National Yacht Club, which is my sailing club. I’ve spent so much of my life there that it was really nice to be able to have our wedding there.

I’ve got a pretty big family, and Cian’s got a huge family, and we both have really good friend groups. So I think we had nearly 200 people on the day. The yacht club really has only got space for about 120, so everyone was wedged in.

I got my dress from a wedding shop in Kenmare. I’d seen it online and when I contacted the shop they said they had one sample left, and that if I wanted to order it, it would take six months.

Annalise Murphy and her husband Cian on their wedding day

So, one morning, I drove down to Kenmare with my best friend and I tried on the sample dress, and it fit me perfectly. Now the zip was broken on it and there were a few little pieces wrong, but nothing major. I took the dress home that day.

For our wedding day, we got the best day of the year. It was an absolute scorcher.

The only problem with that was everyone was late; because it was such a nice day, every person in Dublin decided to go to Dún Laoghaire to walk the pier or get an ice cream from Teddy’s.

I was getting calls from guests saying they were stuck in gridlocked traffic in Blackrock.

The night before was glorious too. We had planned a cycle with all of our friends.

You see, I first met my husband at a friend’s wedding, but then the next time I met him was outside on a cycle, and we cycle a lot together. So we thought it would be nice to have a cycle with all our friends and we finished in the Blue Light pub for a pint.

Annalise Murphy and her husband Cian organised a cycle with their friends the evening before their wedding.

For our flowers, myself and my bridesmaids and my mum went to north Co Dublin and picked loads of sunflowers to raise money for St Francis’ Hospice.

We made all the bouquets for the wedding and then put the rest of the flowers on the tables. Making the floral arrangements was one of my favourite things about the day — we had great craic.

My brother was our sort of pretend celebrant in the Maritime Museum. When everyone sat down, he said: “You’re all here today and this is a sham, they’re already married!”. It was very funny.

We had a few personal touches during the ceremony, which was super short.

Annalise Murphy with her bridesmaids on her wedding day

Rory Fitzpatrick, my coach for most of my sailing career, stood up. I’d given him poems to read, but he actually just freestyled it and did a whole other poem he’d made up about Cian and myself. And then Cian’s sister, Lara, is a really good singer, so she sang Elbow — One Day Like This.

After the ceremony, we walked across to the yacht club. Because it was so sunny, we had our drinks reception outside and we had a three-piece mariachi band who could play anything — at one stage they were playing Baby Shark for my young nephew!

Annalise Murphy and her husband Cian during their wedding ceremony.

After the meal, we had the speeches. They didn’t go on too long, but there were a good few of them. Sarah, my New Zealand friend, wanted to say a few words, and because she came all the way from New Zealand I was more than happy to let her. My sister did a speech too, and so did I. Then Cian did a speech and my dad too.

We had a band and a DJ then for the party afterwards. We had a first dance, but we hadn’t really thought about picking a song for it. We asked the band what their favourite song was to play for a first dance; they played Dancing in the Moonlight, so that’s what we danced to!

I don’t know what time we were up until. I wouldn’t really get hangovers, but I don’t know what I was drinking that day, because the next day, I thought I was going to die. We had planned to bring everyone sailing the next day — we were having a mini sailing regatta. There were lots of my friends who had never gone sailing before, so we were bringing them all out in the boats, and I just thought I was going to die all day.

Looking back on it, it was just a really fun day. I know it’s getting to celebrate with all your friends and family but before, I wasn’t even too sure if I wanted a big wedding, and then someone said to me that there’s never another day in your life where you’re going to bring all of the people that you love together to have a big party. So that’s what we did, and it was a really great day.

• Triple Olympian sailor Annalise Murphy won a silver medal in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio