There were poignant scenes outside the Department of Health on Tuesday as the brides-to-be arrived to fight for their weddings.
Eighteen months of deprivation and suffering encapsulated in one frantic half-hour of massive disappointment, dashed hopes and indiscriminate effing and blinding.
To say the photographers were distraught is an understatement.
It’s been an awful pandemic for them – condemned in the main to a no-frills diet of men in dark suits and an occasional trip to the zoo.
Tony Holohan hunched behind a desk. Darragh O’Brien clutching a shovel. Celebrity virologists. Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar reading speeches. Stephen Donnelly looking down the lens like a stunned mullet.
No chance to go to racecourses and festivals to photograph all the lovely girls. No organised picture ops involving women in flimsy dresses and maybe a few fellas with no body hair flexing their biceps for the sake of the Equality.
It’s been tough. But things were definitely looking up.
Brides-to-be! Oodles of lovely girls! Hallelujah!
The BTBs would be marching on Government Buildings in protest at restrictions on wedding attendances. There was dramatic talk of gardaí having to “seal off” roads near the department’s headquarters on Baggot Street as apparently up to 200 women were taking part.
And, best of all, they would be wearing wedding dresses. The full rig. (Presumably not the ones purchased for the actual nuptials. What if it turned into a sit-down protest and they had to be dragged away by the guards?)
The protest was organised by the Wedding International Professionals Association (WIPA) to press the case for a relaxation of the attendance curbs. The marriage industry, worth an estimated €2.3 billion to the economy annually, is in dire straits after months of reduced activity.
As the Cabinet discussed raising the guest limit at receptions from 50 to 100 people, WIPA planned to hand in an extensive list of guidelines showing how weddings could be scaled up safely.
Flashing their garters
Energised by the prospect of hundreds of Bridezillas going rogue and flashing their garters at the Taoiseach, the Piczillas and ancillary media forces assembled outside the department. TV and radio news reporters, newspaper hacks and trade magazine aficionados massed on Miesian Plaza, gasping for a fluffy, offbeat angle to brighten the dreary Covid-19 beat.
Midday was the appointed hour.
A Garda reinforcement loitered like a coiled spring against the bonnet of an SUV and monitored proceedings, under orders to scramble the Black Marias parked up around the corner with their engines running should things turn nasty.
There was a big crowd on the footpath, lured by the advance publicity. Most were bewildered photographers. We saw some lads we hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. But there wasn’t a wedding dress to be seen. Two women wearing ivory dresses walked around holding lovely bouquets, but they were executives from WIPA.
Eventually, four BTBs were located and the pack descended. In fairness, these women have had a difficult and expensive time, booking and cancelling weddings on multiple occasions. They had been given reason to believe by the Government that the 50-guest limit would change to 100 in early August, but Leo Varadkar then threw a spanner in the works by cautioning couples to plan for “50” guests.
The photographers prayed a cavalry of elaborately confected fiancees would appear over the horizon in a fragrant cloud of confetti to the stirring strains of Wagner's Bridal Chorus
“Where’s all the brides?” wailed one photographer. “I can’t see any dresses or veils. What’s going on?”
The BTB’s wore simple white summer dresses and tennis shoes. Very fetching they were too. But the Piczillas were raging.
“They look more like tennis players from the 1920s. You’d buy a beach dress like that in Penney’s for a tenner, for f*** sake.”
Another fumed: “Two hundred protesters me arse.”
Anxiously scanning the horizon, they prayed a cavalry of elaborately confected fiancees would appear over the horizon (Baggot Street Bridge) in a fragrant cloud of confetti to the stirring strains of Wagner’s Bridal Chorus.
It didn’t happen.
So they made the best of a bad situation.
“Let’s do all the brides first.”
Down on one knee
Four women stood in a line in front of the department. Then a young guy wearing a tuxedo joined them, going down on one knee as if proposing. He tried to coax a reluctant golden retriever into the photo, but Jessie wasn’t minded to co-operate.
“Bring the dog into it,” yelled a Piczilla desperate to take the bare look off. Three bigwigs from WIPA and an unidentified older man in baggy shorts were also drafted in.
The young man was Tony Barry (21), son of Claire Hanley, who used to cater for large numbers at high-end weddings before the pandemic.
“I’m a waiter who’s out of work now,” said Tony.
Anna Killeen from Dublin, who is marrying Dave Hare in Connemara on August 16th, said: “We are hoping to have 100 guests. How do you disinvite 50 people?” Dave was a rare creature at this event – an actual groom.
But then, weddings are of no importance to grooms, if Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly is anything to go by. On his way into the Cabinet meeting he was asked about lifting the restrictions on receptions and hinted good news was likely coming.
“It’s a relatively small number of people, but for all those brides out there, and – dare I say – some grooms out there, it is an important day.”
After sending a man from the board of WIPA to the front door of the department with their set of guidelines and one of the bouquets (which he brought back), the small group and their larger entourage of disappointed Piczillas dashed through the back lanes to Government Buildings.
The older man turned out to be Paudie Herlihy from Cahirsiveen in Kerry. His London-based daughter Íde is marrying Wayne Hughes in Killarney on August 21st. The wedding has been cancelled twice, with the guest list whittled down to 100 from 240.
That’s nothing for Kerry, says Paudie. “Some of the weddings are 450, but I suppose we will never see that day again.”
He says Varadkar’s intervention threw plans into disarray, particularly for those who have family travelling from abroad. But it wasn’t all gloom.
“Do you know what, ’tis great to come to Dublin,” he said. “There’s no one here. It’s brilliant. I had the whole place to myself, cycling around the city. I come up to Dublin a lot, I love it and I’d say most of the Dubs are gone to Wexford or Kerry.”
By mid-afternoon, the BTBs got the good news they wanted to hear, weddings for 100 guests will start up on August 5th.
The photographers got over their upset.
But the two bouquets ended up in flitters.
