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Róisín Ingle: After 24 years of non-married bliss and bickering, my wedding was a whirlwind

I’m pretty hopeful this love will be everlasting. Let’s hope it lasts longer than the rings, anyway

He opted for a pair of silver Celtic Knot rings which we didn’t know at the time symbolised everlasting love. Photograph: iStock
He opted for a pair of silver Celtic Knot rings which we didn’t know at the time symbolised everlasting love. Photograph: iStock

It might not seem like the time of year to think about weddings, but spare a thought for all the people planning theirs. Last year, while winter turned to spring, I masterminded parts of mine from a comfortable chair in the cancer day ward in the Mater Hospital. The weekly chemotherapy sessions were an ideal time to send texts and confirm bookings when I wasn’t snoozing or munching on free sandwiches from the well-stocked refreshments trolley.

After 24 years of non-married bliss (intermittent) and a good bit of bickering (ongoing, mostly my fault), the wedding was a whirlwind. I asked Jonny to marry me at a restaurant on Leap Day, February 29th, when a pink and blue silk tie delivered with dessert by a co-conspirator waiter. At that point I punningly asked “will you tie the knot with me?” He said yes and our wedding was booked for July 3rd. It could have been fraught but planning a wedding in four months proved a lovely distraction from some of the more arduous side effects of treatment.

The organising was made even easier by the fact that the man I was going to marry had no interest in the planning process. All he had to do was decide on the wedding rings. He had never worn a ring in his life and I didn’t much mind what they looked like, so he got to choose. He opted for a pair of silver Celtic Knot rings which we didn’t know at the time symbolised everlasting love. How romantic. More on which later.

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The Mater cancer ward is a place of bustling efficiency and quiet solidarity. Alex, one of the brilliant nurses there, was also planning a wedding. We swapped notes about hair stylists and make-up artists and music. She’s a musician and will be playing in her own wedding band next month. Meanwhile I corralled a load of wonderful musician friends along with our two teenage daughters and their mates to play and sing at ours. Our wedding guru, the poet and style maven Jan Brierton, in addition to helping with everything from my hot pink dress to my pale pink wedding cowboy boots, wrote us a poem called The Good Bits, which she read out on the day. There’s a line in it, “We make good tunes for life’s Mix Tape, We call our band The Good Bits”. So that’s of course what we decided to call the wedding band.

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The Good Bits, both the poem and the band, were two of our most precious wedding gifts but at first we didn’t give too much thought to presents. There was no wedding list. After 24 years we had all the kitchen appliances we needed and anyway it felt strange to be dictating what guests should give. Until I realised, closer to the wedding, that this was exactly what we should do. Mostly, we wanted cold, hard cash. I know this is controversial, but weddings are expensive. I spread the word around to immediate family members that money would be welcome and they were happy to oblige.

I didn’t feel able to ask friends for money, so instead I took a look at our life together, and tried to figure out what was missing. It had to be something big. A good friend, an author and globally esteemed journalist who I’ll call “Fintan”, had been recently showered with plaudits for his work, including some significant monetary prizes. One night at dinner, as I displayed my shaved head in public for the first time, he let me know that he wanted to use some of that money to splash out on an extravagant wedding gift for us. I took the offer seriously and eventually landed on the very thing.

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After many summers hoisting our dining table and chairs outside when we wanted to eat in the yarden – I love an alfresco dinner situation – I realised we could use “Fintan’s” kind offer to do what regular people do and finally get some outdoor furniture. Off I went with my mother, my husband-to-be and my good friend and colleague Paul Howard to a Wicklow outdoor furniture emporium. As we walked around the outdoor store, Paul kept egging me on to choose ever more expensive items, eight-seater hot tubs and barbecue huts and heated gazebos and the like – “it’s what ‘Fintan’ would want,” he reasoned – but I settled on a straightforward table and chairs combination.

The gift, which I quickly dubbed “Fintan’s Furniture”, ended up spawning an alliterative trend in wedding presents. Lisa helped improve the lighting in our bedroom with “Lisa’s Lamp”. We never had decent luggage so this was rectified by another friend with “Marian’s Málas”. And on it went.

Regular readers will know I was married once before. It didn’t work out but I’m pretty hopeful this love will be everlasting. Unfortunately, the rings weren’t. My new husband lost his a month after the wedding while we were on holiday in Spain. I can’t wear mine any more because the Celtic Knot design gave me a rash or perhaps “silver” didn’t actually mean silver. But rings or no rings, we’re still married. And thanks to “Fintan”, we have a durable set of outdoor furniture waiting for spring and many more of life’s good bits to arrive.