EILEEN BUCKLEY AND Michael Cussen were married on September 25th in St John’s Church, Cratloe, Co Clare by parish priest Fr Liam Enright, who was formerly the curate in Mike’s parish in Raheen, Limerick. Their friend, uilleann piper Matt Bashford, played at the wedding as he had promised to do eight years previously, when Eileen and Mike started going out together. A harpist and fiddle player accompanied him in the beautiful country church. Friends and family came from all over Ireland, New York, Norway, Holland, Portugal, Spain and elsewhere to attend the wedding on a day of perfect sunshine.
Eileen, the daughter of Mary and Dan Buckley, grew up in Caherdavin, Co Limerick, the youngest of three children. She attended Salesian secondary school in Limerick city and then went to Mary Immaculate College in Limerick where she studied for an arts degree. She then did an MA in women’s studies at the University of Limerick.
Mike, the son of Bill and Kathleen Cussen, grew up in Raheen, Co Limerick, the youngest of five. He also studied arts in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick. The couple met in 1995 and became firm friends from the start. They began going out together when they both went to the Czech Republic in their Erasmus year in 2001 to teach English.
Mike and Eileen are from business backgrounds. Mike’s father Bill runs a crane-hire company in Limerick and Eileen’s father, Dan, runs a coffee importing/distribution business in the southwest. Mike went to work for Dan after graduating in 2003. Then the couple decided to go into partnership. They were both living in Limerick city and were customers of the Wine Buff, a wine shop franchise that started in Limerick and now has 15 outlets throughout the country. In May 2007, Mike and Eileen opened the first and only Wine Buff shop in Dublin, in Sandycove, Dún Laoghaire.
The couple became engaged in September last year, when Mike cooked a surprise five-course dinner in their Killiney apartment and presented Eileen with a ring he had designed – a princess-cut diamond with a pear-shaped sapphire on either side.
They closed the shop for just over a week at the end of September to get married. Bridesmaids for Eileen were her sister Clodagh Buckley and sister-in-law Lorinda Buckley, who came from New York for the wedding, and close friend Claire Healy, who came from Lisbon. Mike’s best man was his brother Ciaran; another brother, William, and Mike’s childhood friend Darren Gilligan were groomsmen. Clodagh’s daughter, Katie O’Brien, was the flower girl.
Everything went perfectly on the wedding day and Mike says: “I’d do it all over again, I really enjoyed the day.”
The wedding reception was in Gallagher’s seafood restaurant in Bunratty for 60 people, all close family. Wines, of course, were supplied by Wine Buff. While the couple’s photographs were being taken in Bunratty Folk Park, caricaturist Mark Heng entertained the guests before the meal by drawing pictures of parents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and then the bride and groom. The wedding photographer was a Sandycove friend, Dara “Dinky” Lawless.
After the meal, the entire wedding party moved on to music venue Dolan’s Warehouse in Limerick city, owned by family friend Mick Dolan, where Irish band Kíla played for the 250 guests. There was a champagne reception and buffet, where the centrepiece was an organic hand-reared pig on a spit from Crowe’s farm in Dundrum, Co Tipperary.
The party lasted all night and the couple stayed with them, not leaving for their honeymoon until after “the post-match analysis” a day later, says Mike. They flew from Dublin to Rome and drove to Amalfi, where they enjoyed beautiful weather for a week. They flew home on Saturday, October 3rd and got straight back to business, opening their shop that afternoon.
