O’Connor hoping ‘dream wedding’ is fourth time lucky

“I’LL never marry again,” Sinéad O’Connor once declared, but now she is hoping that it will be fourth time lucky as she prepares to get hitched again today, on her 45th birthday.

O’Connor, a mother of four, made the announcement live on radio yesterday before heading for a flight from Dublin to the US.

She said on her website she is to marry “beloved boyfriend” Barry Herridge, from Raheny, Co Dublin, at a “dream wedding ceremony”, which is understood to be taking place in Las Vegas.

During the summer, O’Connor launched a campaign to find a man online, on Twitter and on the Late Late Show, even propositioning Late Late host Ryan Tubridy and attending the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival in September.

She generated huge publicity with her public search for love and her admissions that she missed sex desperately.

O’Connor posted a message on her blog in August to say that a “gorgeous” man had got in touch and she hoped he would prove “a good egg”.

She first made the announcement on Today FM and later confirmed her intentions to John Murray on RTÉ.

O’Connor had been a guest on the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM on Tuesday, where she talked about the release of her new album and her new single, How About I Be Me.

However, when Dempsey asked her if she had any big news as the end of the year approaches, she had nothing new to share. But yesterday she rang the show back, saying her boyfriend had had a “crisis of conscience” and together they announced that they are getting married.

She said: “He loves your show and he said: ‘If this leaks out and Ian Dempsey asked you that question and you didn’t tell him, he’s going to shoot himself’.”

Mr Herridge, who works as a children’s addiction counsellor, also came on the phone and although he would not reveal where the wedding was taking place, he said “it is a very special place to Sinéad”.

Yesterday, she posted on her website: “With enormous joy myself and my beloved boyfriend Barry Herridge will be getting married tomorrow, December 8 2011 at ‘an undisclosed location’ in my absolute dream wedding ceremony. We will post a photo or two here on the site as soon as possible afterward. Very happy girl.”

O’Connor was previously married to music producer John Reynolds, journalist Nicholas Sommerlad and Steve Cooney. She also had a number of high-profile relationships, including with journalist John Waters and social columnist Dermot Hayes.