New Year’s Eve can sometimes be a letdown for revellers, but Laura Condon and Keith Legget are unlikely to forget the end of 2008 in a hurry. The couple got married on December 31st at St Nicholas of Myra church on the Malahide Road and rang in the new year afterwards with 190 guests at Kettle’s Country House Hotel in Lispopple, near Swords. A recent bereavement can make a wedding bittersweet, particularly after the death of a sibling – tragically, Laura’s sister Claire died in 2006. “That was one of the reasons that I picked New Year’s Eve because it has been such a difficult day for us each year since she died, and I wanted to turn it into something positive and get the family together. Keith and I lit a candle for her during the ceremony and I shed a tear then, but after that we tried to get on and enjoy the day. You keep her in your mind, of course.”
A large bridal party included her parents Jim and Carmel Condon, and Keith’s parents Mary and Willy Legget. The bride’s sister Linda was maid of honour and bridesmaids were another sister, Jamie Lee, friend Kathy, and Keith’s sister Fiona. The groom’s best man was his brother Paul, and he also had three groomsmen. Laura’s eight-year-old son Jack was a pageboy. “In his best man’s speech, Paul welcomed not just me to their family, but also Jack, and that really meant a lot to me. Keith’s family have been brilliant about Jack since day one.”
The couple had known each other “for years” according to Laura, but they started to date in 2006. Perhaps the building boom can be credited: in November 2006 Laura asked Keith, a builder, to price an attic conversion for her. Not the most romantic of propositions, she admits, but it worked. “He contacted me a while later with the price and then we started texting and it went from there. I really never thought that I would meet someone special.. From the start we could just be ourselves around each other. We decided after about five months together that we wanted to have a family and our son Karl was born in February last year. We got engaged in September 2007.” With a baby and an eight-year-old to contend with, was she stressed in the run-up to the wedding? “No, I wasn’t too bad. I knew what I wanted from it and who I wanted to invite. I had my little wedding notebook and I had lots of plans made. I was tired from the baby alright, but I wasn’t really stressed. It was all worth it – we had a really brilliant day.”
After the celebrations, they went to the US for their honeymoon, with Laura’s sister on babysitting duties at home. “We spent about eight days over there and went to New York and Las Vegas. It was lovely, but both of us found it hard being away from the children and we were happy to come home in the end.”