Shane breaks hearts with new Westwife
Among the 380 guests attending the lavish reception bash at Ashford Castle was Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and his wife Miriam. Last year, the couple's daughter Georgina married Nicky Byrne in a French chateau with a celebrity magazine paying €850,000 for the photo rights.
"They are a lovely couple," Byrne said of Shane and Gillian Walsh. "I'm really looking forward to having a great party."
Shane arrived, on time, at Ballintubber Abbey, Co Mayo, in a gleaming Bently. His bride was a fashionable 20 minutes late and opted for horse and carriage transport to the church.
After the ceremony the couple posed for photographs, thrilling media and 200 fans who travelled from every part of the country for the showbiz hitch.
"It's not every day you get to attend a ceremony like this in an 800-year-old abbey, it's been a lovely day," said Mr Ahern as the guests milled from the church to the reception.
Guests, including Ronan Keating and Louis Walsh, were asked not to give the couple presents but, if they wished, to make a donation to the North West Hospice.
Shane popped the question while he and Gillian were on holiday together in Dubai last year.
The Westlifer's elder brother Finbar acted as best man. Music at the strictly-behind-closed-doors wedding party scheduled to go on until some time this morning was not provided by chart-topping Westlife.
Instead, Shane was understood to have laid on another band, complete with its own DJ.
The couple are building a sprawling €1.5 million house in Sligo. The house will have seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, a dining room to seat almost 20 people, a gym, sauna, snooker room and everything else you would expect of a pop star's palace.
The couple's marriage footsteps retraced those of 007 star Pierce Brosnan who choose Ballintubber Abbey and Ashford Castle for his wedding in 2001.
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