Body and Soul Magazine
May/June 2002

A "destination wedding in Ireland proves to be both magical and unpredictable.
By Genna McLaughlin

We're only thirty minutes into our life's journey together, and already my husband and I have encountered a flat. On the way to the church, a tire on my mother-in-law's rented Peugot was sacrificed to one of Ireland's rutty two-lane country roads. We left the car on the berm and have just returned for it in another car. So, when other new brides might be enjoying a limo ride to a grand reception hall or celebrating with a champagne toast, I am sitting in a Suzuki Sidekick watching my now lawfully-wedded husband direct cars and grazing sheep around our herd of wedding guests.

We've spurned the limousine, the champagne and the $100 a head, 300-guest, Broadwaylike extravaganzas put on by so many friends, colleagues and other American couples in their late twenties and their thirties. Sean and I wanted romance. We wanted simplicity and tranquility too. So when a friend suggested a "destination" wedding - in a place other than home (which is Pittsburgh) -- the idea appealed to us. The recurring nightmare of individually wrapping 600 sugared almonds in white netting suddenly vanished. Instead, Sean and I, two Irish-Americans who had never visited the ancestral homeland, began dreaming of heather-covered rolling green hills and quaint villages, where the sheep outnumber the cars. We invited 12 family members to join us for a ceremony in the Gaelic-speaking farming town of Rosmuc on Ireland's west coast and hoped for a wedding free of the headaches that had plagued so many of our friends. Little did we know that we were trading the banal dilemmas of a conventional American wedding for the novel predicaments of a foreign one.

In Ireland the best day for weddings is Wednesday, according to an old adage. We only learned this after reserving the Rosmuc church for a Wednesday afternoon in August; nonetheless, we considered it auspicious. Unfortunately, we could find no adage concerning the best day to arrive in Ireland. Clouds and fog blanketed the entire west coast of Ireland (or so it seemed) when we landed at Shannon Airport on a Sunday morning. Mist clung to the terminal waiting-room windows like a beggar seeking shelter. With my wedding dress in its white plastic body bag slung over my shoulder, I stretched my plane-weary legs and took my place next to Sean in the rental-car line. In minutes, the damp Irish air had pasted our wrinkled travel clothes to our bodies like cold towels and matted our hair against our foreheads. At least our gray luggage coordinated with the bags under our sleepless eyes, I thought. And I was sure we looked perkier than our now crumpled wedding dress and tuxedo.

Rain pelted our convoy, as the 14 of us, squeezed into four tiny cars, headed north from Shannon to the small fishing village of Oughterard, where we had booked rooms in several bed and breakfasts. Our parents, brothers, sisters, a niece, a nephew and one set of adventuresome grandparents had accepted our invitation to Ireland and now shared our damp fate. (They had paid their own way, and my parents had offered to buy dinner in a local restaurant following the ceremony) On the drive to Oughterard, through the rain-soaked, foggy car windows, I got my first glimpse of the Irish countryside - blurry, thatch-roofed cottages floating on a sea of green. Sheep stared back at me from the roadside, and even they seemed to shiver beneath tangled gray coats.

The B&B that Sean and I had chosen beckoned us like a beacon of warmth as we staggered out of the car and toward the soft yellow light coming through the open door. The proprietress, Kathleen, stood framed in the red doorway, looking every bit to us soggy, bedraggled travelers like Penelope welcoming Odysseus home after a 20-year voyage. "You'll be wantin some tea then," she said, her Irish brogue rising above the sound of the waterfall that ran through the side yard. Moments later, in the dry, wood-paneled breakfast room, near the bay window that overlooked the wild banks of the Owenriff River, I closed my eyes and the sweet, hot liquid warmed my throat and my dampened spirits. Between gulps, I opened my eyes and looked across the oak table at Sean. His eyes were closed too.

We had been warned about Ireland's damp chill but not its sun, which arose with us our first morning in Oughterard. During the next two days, prior to the wedding, our group toured the northwest coast under a capricious sky that soaked us with raindrops as often as it engulfed us in sun. Several members of our pale-faced party reddened and blistered in the sun, and we donned and discarded layers of clothing as often as we snapped pictures. In fact, we began to anticipate the sudden shifts in weather, so common in Ireland. Most of the time, I watched in awe as the chameleon sky turned from gray to white and from white to rainbow-streaked blue in minutes. And there were moments - sitting on a rock watching sheep graze or eating brown bread slathered with sweet butter - when the bliss was so complete I forgot my soggy wedding dress and that I had flown 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to a foreign country.

The day before the wedding, Sean and I drove 40 minutes north to Rosmuc to see the Church of the Incarnation. We had chosen the modest stone church because an online chat room occupant had described it as "quaint and beautiful." We arrived, however, in a downpour. Both sanctuary and vestibule were dark and damp. Stained-glass windows behind the altar cast distorted globs of blue, red and yellow on a worn, russet carpet. Rain-soaked parishioners filled the rough-hewn pews (it was a Holy Day) and mildewed pamphlets were scattered everywhere.

"I wasna sure you'd come," Father Padraig Considine greeted us with these words in a thick Irish brogue. Now, as during a transatlantic telephone call months before, Father Consaidin expressed surprise that two Americans would want to marry in his simple country church. I was beginning to question the choice myself as I stood shivering in the dank stone church. But minutes later, after our preparations were made, we stepped out into sunshine. And from the bluff, on which the church sits, I could see in all directions - views of the small farm cottages of Rosumuc, the blue waters of Lough Corrib and shades of green so intense it was painful to look, but impossible to look away.

On the way back to Oughterard, we stopped at a local flower stand and picked my wedding bouquet of orange, red and yellow Gerbera daisies. We arrived in town ravenously hungry, looking forward to helpings of the thick bone-warming Irish stew we had already come to love. But it was 9 p.m., and the restaurants in the small fishing town had already seated their last guests for the evening. The only thing open to us was the local grocery. We bought packaged cheese, some mustard, bread and a bag of cookies, which we ate alone sitting thigh to thigh on my parents' bed. Somewhere between the main course and the desert, it struck me: "Do you realize this is our rehearsal dinner?" I asked Sean. He turned to me and we laughed, realizing that here was the simplicity we had wanted all along. Anne, the proprietress of the B&B, arrived a few minutes later with a wedding present - a bottle of champagne and candles from a local factory. I squeezed Sean's hand conspiratorially. And here was the romance.

The following morning, we awoke to clear blue skies, and I wondered whether to thank the Wednesday wedding prophecy or the Infant Jesus statue that Kathleen had placed under a tree to ward off rain for bringing us such a glorious day. The sun seemed to follow us to the church, warming its dank interior. The ceremony was short and simple. When it was time, I slipped my arm through my father's, feeling the scratchy wool of his suit jacket against my bare skin, and we began the short walk down the aisle.

I didn't notice that the small church was almost empty. (After all there were only 14 in our wedding party) Nor was I bothered by the crackly recording of Pachelbel's Canon booming from the small cassette player behind the altar. I could have been walking down the aisle of any cathedral, anywhere in the world, with 300 guests and an orchestra playing the famous Mendelssohn "Wedding March." But here I was in a modest village church, in a place where people speak an ancient tongue and where I'd glimpsed the pastor in a sweat suit dusting the pews as the first guests arrived. And at that moment, I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world.

I don't know if Sean or I would have cried back in Pittsburgh. But when I reached the altar, I lifted my Irish-lace handkerchief and wiped the tears from my cheeks, then leaned over and wiped the tears from his. Father Consaidin tripped over his English words. My two-year-old nephew stormed the altar during the first reading. Sean and I cried again as we recited our vows, and we laughed as we signed our ornate marriage license with a white feather pen. We posed for pictures until my four-year-old niece fell asleep and my mother-in-law reminded us about her car.

Now, as I sit in the car watching Sean direct traffic, Tim, our photographer, changes the tire with help from Sean's Dad. They smile and laugh while the sheep shoot them wary glances. I sit in the backseat twirling my new platinum ring around my finger, trying to think about how I got here, to the side of some road, in this country where sheep do outnumber the cars. But all that comes to mind is how perfect Wednesdays are for weddings and that infant statues under trees can work miracles in Ireland. Above us the sky has been blue the whole day. But somewhere there must have been a storm, because on the horizon there is a rainbow marking the sky from one end of the world to another.