The superintendent registrar of births, deaths and marriages was feeling romantic. "It's one of the most romantic paintings ever painted," Sean Fitzgerald said, proudly smiling at the print of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs, which will hang in front of couples marrying in Dublin's new register office.
"It shows the man who is consumed with passion for the woman. They pass on the stairs and in an uncontrollable urge he grabs her arm. The look on his face is complete adoration. And she doesn't pull away her arm, but drops the flowers she's carrying. It's a symbol of the chivalry and high esteem in which women were held in those days."
The knight and his red-haired love oversaw their first wedding in the elegant surroundings of the Eastern Health Board's temporary register office yesterday morning.
Pedantic art historians will point out that the painting depicts doomed lovers from a Danish ballad in which the knight kills seven of his lover's brothers and is himself killed by the youngest. But couples will probably prefer the first interpretation.
As Mr Fitzgerald explained, the history of Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in Lower Grand Canal Street and of the boardroom where hundreds of people will be married in the next three months, a couple looked in. "Come about a wedding?" No, they said, "just having a peep."
The boardroom was used for the set of Michael Collins's provisional government meetings in the film by Neil Jordan. The stairway, which will feature in many a group photograph, was where Kitty Kiernan, played by Julia Roberts, heard news of his death.
The Eastern Health Board's permanent register office in Trinity College's teaching centre next door is expected to be ready by November. In the meantime, hundreds of the 1,200 civil ceremonies expected in Dublin this year will be held in the hospital building.
John Gray and his fiancee, Helen Bowen, agreed the new office was a big improvement. They had arrived to finalise their wedding later this month. "I think it shows a change of attitude. Before it was as though you'd almost be ashamed to be married in a registry office. It was a pokey little office."
The health board has taken over civil marriage ceremonies in Dublin city and county since the retirement last week of the solicitor who had provided the service in Molesworth Street for many years.
The new room can accommodate some 30 guests, and the permanent register office is expected to hold up to 60 guests in an amphitheatre.
Shortly after noon the newly appointed registrar, Ms Teresa Byrne, married Melissa Adjei from north London to Kaz Ishola from Sierra Leone. Ms Byrne said afterwards she would never forget her first wedding. Four more followed, with an average of five a day, six days a week, for the rest of the year.
