Former Irish Voice reporter GEORGINA BRENNAN returned home to live and get married. Here, in the last of her series of articles leading up to her big day, she reports on the wedding.

And again, and again. Our wedding day would be my Groundhog Day in an ideal world.

It’s been a while since I last wrote. I was waiting for the pictures. Finally we got almost 1,000 of them back from Magic Moments and the DVD of the day, so we are reliving it all again now and I thought you might like to know how it went.

It was beautiful. It was perfect. One thing we learned was that you don’t have to be rich to have a fairytale wedding. In fact, if you put your heart and soul into it, you will achieve riches beyond belief.

The lead up to the wedding was insane. We had so much to do. It was actually more perfect because we did put that time in.

We had a few tears over last-minute cancellations, family and friends who didn’t make the wedding and people who didn’t even acknowledge the day, but we got over all of that when the eve of the wedding came.

It was our first day off. We had been putting in all hours at our jobs, every free moment at the house pulling plaster off some walls and taking down other ones and clearing the land.

In all that time, we were still trying to navigate Ireland and finding things in a country we were by now, after almost six years in New York, almost strangers in. When I heard the car would need a blanket as the seats were leather and would be cold, it was a drama to try and find one.

Chris was run ragged collecting suits, ensuring the flowers were delivered and everything in the church was on schedule. We were still back and forth with table changes to the hotel and we had to drop out the table decorations we had brought from New York, the reindeer and candles and all that jazz.

By the time my bridesmaids had descended from New York via Dublin, London and down the road, I was nearly exhausted and in serious need of pampering. After two hours in the nail salon I emerged unable to touch anything because they didn’t have hand dryers for manicures in the place I went to.

It was too late to have gone somewhere else and in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t the drama it was made out to be. Thank God I decided to visit my grandmother’s grave. It broke any tension there was over a strange manicure.

By nightfall, Chris was kissing me at the garden gate, my hands dry and holding his. We were at our calmest in those moments. The next day we would be married.

Neither of us could get our heads around that one. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him actually. As the wedding drew close, I realized just how much I needed him.

As I sat inside with two of my bridesmaids (one had just shortly before had a baby and was staying with him) and we chatted about non-wedding things, the excitement inside grew. I could barely sleep, but a glass of wine helped and the next morning I woke fresh and smiling when bridesmaid Nicola peeped in through my old bedroom door.

My mum had the fresh coffee on, but it was almost time to go into town for the hair styling. We picked up my matron of honor Jenny before meeting our third bridesmaid Natasha in the salon.

We did get a shock when we arrived at the salon to find it packed and the hair stylists under severe pressure. It was only nine in the morning. I really missed my hairdresser Kathleen in Seera’s in Woodlawn that morning. But there was little that could be done, so we just got on with it.

Nicola had a word or two with the stylists, and they really tried to pamper us to make up for what was a frantic environment. But our hair turned out gorgeous, though none of us will go back to that salon again.

When we arrived home to have our make-up applied, the atmosphere was very stressful, and though I had been calm all morning I found myself crying on the morning of my wedding because it all got a bit crazy. Suddenly I could not wait to see Chris. I really needed him.

“Where is the car?” I asked, realizing the time, only to hear that there was no sign of it. The priest, Father Dunphy had urged me to be only five minutes late. We were getting married at three and he was worried about the light. So I started to worry.

My uncle who deals in vintage cars was providing the car. He called my dad as we all stood in the hall panicking that we would have to walk the five miles to the church.

“I’m on the ring road, I had to get a different car, the 1940s one broke down,” he said. My father breathed rather heavily and then said, “Ring road, I’ll ring your neck.”

He would later bring that up again and again, and my uncle still has not lived it down, though he has since asked me to be godmother to his new son. I think it’s a token to forgive him with.

So my quick thinking friend Laura, who must also be psychic, texted to ask if we needed a car, and Jenny rounded up the bridesmaids and my mother and rushed them up to the church in Laura’s car. My uncle rolled up then in a 1965 Jaguar and whipped out cleaning fluid and asked my dad to shine it. Really, it was quite comical.

And as dad and I sat into the back and the doors of the Jaguar kept flying open, we did wonder were we being told something. Once at the church, the fog that had begun that morning had descended on the rocky hill surrounding it, the bubbles floated down to me at the bottom of 42 steps, and I felt full of emotion.

It was beautiful, the crisp chill in the air, the twilight, the fog, my dad helping me up the steps. It was lovely, very magical.

When we got to the door, I really wanted to race down to be with Chris, but I had to wait. We decided to do everything old style, so I would walk in with my dad first, the girls following.

Chris and I would be married facing the congregation and we would exit the church with my dad escorting Chris’ mum and his dad escorting my mum before the bridesmaids and best men.

So, I was the first to see the church when dad opened the old wooden doors. The smell of gardenia from 20 flickering candles that lined the aisle wafted out to me. The white aisle runner strewn with petals looked like snow on the ground.

And there at the top of the aisle was my best friend, with his back to me as I walked through my father’s hand made fairylit Christmas tree arch. I don’t know why, but I have never in my life felt so alive, so full of feeling as though my heart would spill over than I did from the moment I opened the door.

I cried walking up the aisle, and though I really felt like I needed a hug, when Chris squeezed my hand and told me I looked lovely I was so happy. I cried right through the ceremony until he kissed me as my new husband.

Chris and I had chosen the emphasis for our wedding be on family, both for our wishes for the future and for the ceremony. As we stood on the altar facing them, our guests, they were all crying. We felt very loved in those moments. We felt very much at home, and our hearts were plenty full from that feeling.

When the priest, Father Little, congratulated me, it was as though I awoke from a dream. It all happened so fast. As we signed the register and later walked down the aisle, everyone was so jubilant. There was an electric atmosphere that we couldn’t quite explain.

Later Jean, Nicola’s mum, said it was such an intimate wedding, the best she had ever attended, one, which reflected Chris and I. The details, they said, the little bells, the bubbles, the all-Irish music, the fog, the hard work Chris did to have the church exactly as I had asked.

“I have never seen a groom work so hard,” my aunt said. “Short of dressing the priest, he made that church for you.”

I was so proud of him. He was so proud of me. “It all came together,” he said. It did, it truly did.

By the time we got back to the car, it was pitch dark and everyone was in the mood for a party. We drove the Jaguar all steamed with both doors now opening the 15 miles to the old hotel in the middle of

nowhere. One friend said it really was like being in The Great Gatsby, or some other vintage Hollywood movie.

It was beautiful getting there, with the lights flickering in the windows, the fog rolling around the massive trees on the estate and the owner of the hotel helping me out of the car as the bagpiper piped us in. Once inside, we were treated to mulled wine and champagne as the guests enjoyed cocktail hour and we sat for the photographs.

We laughed so much, our cheeks ruddy from the cold, our noses running and the chill working its way through us. I hadn’t felt the cold at all through all the outdoor part of the day. I guess it was adrenaline.

But once I got into the hotel and saw the vintage Jacuzzi bath from the 1920s in the bridal suite, I debated bathing to get warm. As it turned out I had no time, just enough to give my husband a kiss and reapply make-up before dinner.

The speeches were hilarious. We had one table judging us with cards.

Then I surprised everyone by getting up and doing something thoroughly uncharacteristic. I spoke for six seconds. Half of our guests cursed me having lost piles of money for betting I would do my usual and ramble on for hours. I just thanked everyone for coming, it meant so much that they had.

Once the band started up we prepared for our first dance, and we brought the house down. We made mistakes, we certainly had not had the time we could have had to practice, but it turned out well.

Once our dance ended, the floor remained full until the wee hours. We danced to Glen Miller, Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Dean Martin and all the greatest. We even had our own Riverdance intermission courtesy of my aunt and uncle who hired us real Riverdancers who were part of the show when Michael Flatley was in it. They were amazing.

Everyone said it was a wedding of constant surprises. My grandfather told me how proud he was of me. I loved that I could dance with him, dance with my father, my father-in-law and my husband. It really was a great night.

It didn’t end until seven the next morning, the owner of the hotel asleep behind the bar as we tinkled away on the piano singing. We had 300 in the end, 300 people who still ask that we throw another party!

I am so thankful for the photographs, because no matter how much people tell you to try and take in every moment, so much of it flies by. I want to do it all over again, I want to be a guest at my own wedding too, because they looked like they all had a ball.

Our wedding was magic and the celebrations electric. It really was a once in a lifetime day. Now I have to go through the photographs to pick some for a digital album.

We have submitted the plans for the renovation of the new house and I bought a new car. So I guess you could say it hasn’t calmed down here at all!

We haven’t had time to go on a honeymoon what with everything with the house, but we will go, probably for our first anniversary.

If you are thinking of getting married, do it your way. Don’t listen to people who will tell you that a fairytale will cost a fortune. Some hard work and imagination will take you a long way.

Funny too, that a lot of people have said a Christmas wedding is the way to go now. Who needs sunshine when you can get fog. Very Wuthering Heights!

So, still aglow from our wedding, I bid you goodbye. I might see some of you this weekend in Jury’s Hotel in Dublin for the ILIR family and friends day, and if it all works out, Chris and I will be back for a holiday to see New York again.