Love is on the air: two strangers and a blind wedding

THE old superstition that a groom shouldn’t see his bride until she steps up the aisle doesn’t apply to one couple due to wed today - they’ve never laid eyes on each other.

Patrick Dunne and Bernadette Coleman will meet for the first time at their wedding venue this morning and are scheduled to exchange vows minutes later.

The cynics might sneer and the romantics might weep into their Mills and Boons but it’s sure to make good radio and that’s what the “Two Strangers and a Wedding” event is all about.

Patrick, a 34-year-old Securicor employee, and Bernadette, a 30-year-old accountant, were brought together by Dublin radio station 98fm which ran a competition to find two strangers willing to test the theory of love at first sight and broadcast the results.

Listeners picked Bernadette from 250 wannabe brides who entered the contest and then Bernadette, with the help of her mum and best friend, selected her groom from an entry of 80.

The carrot was the offer of an all-expenses paid wedding ceremony at Clontarf Castle, a honeymoon at an Austrian ski resort, a year’s usage of two new cars and various other gifts and prizes. The catch was that the two were at no stage allowed to meet and they have only been speaking by phone for a week.

They will finally be revealed to each other today at 8.15am, to coincide with a live broadcast on the station’s breakfast show, but both insisted the surprise element posed no problem.

“I’m 110% sure about this. We’re getting on like a house on fire. I know it’s too early to tell her I love her but I am falling for her,” said Patrick, who has already passed the first test of a harmonious matrimony by winning the approval of the bride-to-be’s mum.

Bernadette was confident enough to pack her suitcases last night, not only for Clontarf but for Austria.

“The bags are locked and sealed and I’m going on honeymoon,” she said. “I believe in fate quite a bit and fate has brought me and Patrick together.”

Today’s ceremony will have all the trappings of a wedding but without the trap as, for legal reasons, it can’t be performed by a real registrar until the pair give 90 days notice of their intention to marry.

If their unconventional pairing survives the wedding, the honeymoon and the 90 days that follow, they will have to go through the proceedings again for real but that hasn’t lessened their enthusiasm about today’s ceremony.