My Wedding Day with Teresa Mannion: It was lashing — but I wasn't stressed at all

Teresa Mannion and her husband Dave on their wedding day.

We got married on May 10, 1997. We’ll be celebrating a big anniversary next year. We got married in Finnstown Country House Hotel in West County Dublin.

We had the wedding ceremony in the little chapel of the St Mary’s Holy Faith Convent in Glasnevin, which is where I went to school. It’s across the road from the Met Office and it adjoins the grounds of the Botanic Gardens.

It was so special to get permission from the sisters to get married in the little chapel, which is just beautiful. The only thing the nuns were a little concerned about were the stiletto heels damaging the floor of the chapel; the floor was polished to within an inch of its life!

We had about 120 at the wedding, and about 20 of those were children. I organised everything myself; there wasn’t really wedding planners around in those days. For the flowers, I really wanted sunflowers, but, at that time of the year, they had to be imported, so that was my one little luxury.

Teresa Mannion and her husband Dave on their wedding day.

I had my dress made by a designer who worked out of the Powerscourt Shopping Centre. My dress was a gold colour and he did a fabulous job; the attention to detail was incredible. I don’t love too much fuss, so I wanted something low-key and comfortable.

I remember, on the morning of the wedding in my parents’ house, I had a lovely 10 minutes when I was completely on my own, waiting for the car to take me to the church, and everything was so calm and peaceful.

My dad gave me away, and that was really special. Both my parents have since passed. On the day, he was more stressed or hyped up than me. You see, I was the first girl in the house to get married, so he was completely invested. I remember, a few months before the wedding, we were trying to work out the guest list and figuring out the numbers and the plus-ones.

And I remember a lively discussion about who was coming, and my dad said to my brother: “Now look, would you just stop now? This is me and Teresa’s wedding!” Well, we laughed, and we still laugh remembering that!

I worked in the newsroom in RTÉ at the time and one of my friends, Eileen Whelan, she reads the 1 o’clock news, sang in the church for us. That was really lovely.

I remember it was raining on the day, but there were little windows of opportunity to get photographed. We had the photographs taken on the grounds of the convent and in the botanic gardens. Then, the whole way over to Finnstown House it was lashing, but it wasn’t something I was stressed about at all.

Teresa Mannion, her husband Dave, and their wedding party on their wedding day.

After the meal, we all made speeches. My husband, David, is a great storyteller, and he’s funny on his feet, so he was great. My dad inadvertently got another big laugh when he referred to me as Goldilocks. He used to call me Goldilocks as a child, because of the colour of my hair. So he had said: “And then Goldilocks grew up…” That got the biggest laugh.

We had our first dance to Wet, Wet, Wet’s song Love is All Around. To be honest, it was more about what the band could do rather than it having any particular meaning for us. Our band were brilliant; they were an all-female band. They went down a treat.

My party piece over the years has always been The Beatles song When I’m 64. My dad and I sang it together at my wedding. My dad was 64 when I got married (and, of course, I’m 64 now!) and he was a great singer. He drove the DART, and he would sing while he was driving; he’d have all his cassettes with him, and he’d be learning songs all the time. Unbeknownst to me, he knew all the words of the song and he joined me on the night. It’s a nice, special memory for me.

Between the two of us, me working in RTÉ and David working in the Connacht Tribune (he’d also previously worked at The Examiner), we had a lot of journalist friends at the wedding. So it was a lively wedding, and it was so lovely to have everyone there with us.

When I look back on the day, I can see that so many people who had been there with us have since passed away. In my mind’s eye, I can still see them laughing at the speeches, dancing, and thoroughly enjoying themselves and being there for us. That’s quite poignant, because so many of those people are gone now.

• Teresa Mannion is a broadcast journalist with RTÉ and has worked at the national broadcaster for over 40 years. She will be retiring this year.