There will be a record 23,000 weddings in the Republic this year, costing an average of about €30,000 each. And the joy of being a guest comes with a hefty price tag too, writes Kate Holmquist
You're dying to book a holiday but there's no way: on your mantelpiece are three wedding invitations, each more elaborate than the next, requesting your presence in Italy, New York and a posh castle in the back of beyond. Not only do you regard weddings as funerals without the corpses, but the expense is killing you! Wedding planners estimate that being a wedding guest can cost €1,000-€1,500, not including overseas travel expenses. You're looking at spending up to six grand this year on watching Mr Sociable and Miss Organised get loved-up.
"I know I've been invited out of obligation and I feel I'm obligated to go," says Rose, an aunt of the bride. "I abhor weddings, so I'll be sitting there bored out of my skull, trying to make conversation with strangers and, in some cases, relatives I've spent 30 years trying to avoid."
And then there's the wedding list to contend with. Five toilet seats, sofas, rugs, beds, lamps, end-tables, kitchen appliances and a trampoline adorned one bride's list.
"I bought the toilet seats because they were cheapest," says the bride's friend, adding: "Five bathrooms - pretty impressive."
There will be 23,000 weddings in the Republic in 2006 - the most on record - costing an estimated €500 million, not including the gifts. Doves, Celtic dancers, soul singers, chocolate fountains, helicopters, theatrical settings, gazebos with thrones, fireworks, pets attired as bride and groom, hand-painted sugar cubes and billowing clouds of bubbles will be among the rather bizarre totems of Celtic success for couples who want their weddings to be "different" and "memorable". One groom confides that, at vast expense, he has hired a Very Famous Heavy Metal Rock Band, whose name I can't divulge because it would ruin the surprise.
It's a long time since a wedding consisted of a ceremony followed by tea, sandwiches and stodgy fruitcake. As couples strive to outdo one another, even wedding cakes are going out of fashion, unless they're in the form of darling little hand-decorated cupcakes.
Spend a bit of time in the alternative universe that is wedding world and the fact that Peter Andre and Jordan were inspired in their wedding planning by the Barbie aisle in Toys'R'Us begins to make sense.
According to wedding planners, the average wedding costs €30,000, while financial service provider GE Money puts it at €25,000 and revealed this week that the average wedding loan is €11,000.
"When I learn that a couple are remortgaging to pay for their wedding, sometimes I say to myself: 'This is crazy. There are starving people in the world.' But it's my job to help them get the most for their money," says one wedding planner.
This average spend is for your bog- standard beef-or-salmon, cash-bar, band-and-DJ event in some castle or other with a few luxuries thrown in - going mad on the flowers or the dress, perhaps. No wonder 80 per cent of couples don't have first-night sex, according to Confetti magazine - they're too worried about paying the bills afterwards.
It's remarkably easy to spend €100,000 on a wedding, say wedding planners, who charge anything from €1,000 to €8,000 to help a couple create a personal theme that may involve room decoration in the venue at a cost of up to €8,000. The theme could be Zen (think lots of spiritual orange light), circus (live animals and fire-eaters), nautical (bucket-loads of sand, netting, and so on) or pure spring (flowering trees, a goldfish pond and hanging storm lanterns inside the ballroom, with place-cards written on leaves).
One bride-to-be confesses: "The last wedding I attended was so magnificent, I didn't enjoy it at all. I spent the whole time thinking: 'How am I going to top this?' "
The unbridled bride-zilla can become the star of her own show, with the groom relegated to a walk-on part.
"There's a lot of one-upmanship. People want to stand out from everyone else," says Lynne Reece Loftus, of Failte Originals, whose hand-painted invitations and menus sometimes feature caricatures of the bride and groom.
WEDDING PLANNERS HAVE become like theatrical producers.
"I'm doing one wedding where I've been handed a budget of €100,000 for 100 guests on a Celtic theme. It's a challenge to think of ways to spend the money," confides Kate Deegan (31), of Co-ordination Made Easy. Her most recent innovation is the edible menu (€12.50 each).
Deegan, who was runner-up in the Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition in 2004, has been with her boyfriend for 13 years with no plans of marriage.
"He wants a big wedding and I want a small one, and that's what's holding us back," she says.
A €100,000 wedding has what planners call "details", which may include anything from monogrammed linens on the tables to guests' travel and accommodation. Putting your closest friends and family up in a castle for a night may cost €50,000 before you can say Vera Wang (€5,000-€6,000 for a Wang wedding gown at Brown Thomas). Some weddings are three-day events, with activities laid on for guests, especially when they've travelled a distance. The guests must not be bored and pacing is everything, which has made wedding casinos popular (about €1,200) because not everyone enjoys dancing, but also because it's all about the money really.
Everything is cheaper outside Dublin, so country weddings tend to be two or three times bigger. Some country couples are also aided by the tradition of cash gifts (€150 per guest is the current rate), which is catching on in the capital.
"I think my daughter actually ended up making a profit," confides a father of the bride.
Because weddings have become demonstrations of personal identity and taste - with couples writing their vows, bridesmaids reciting original poetry, Al Green crooning Let's Stay Together and pets marching down the aisle - about half of couples who hire wedding planners are choosing to use fairytale venues rather than Catholic churches.
Legislation to allow ceremonies in hotels, homes and outdoors won't be implemented until autumn at the earliest, so many couples treat registry office paperwork as a formality, then consider the "blessing" at their chosen venue hours or days afterwards to be the "real" wedding, says Karen Dodson, principal co-ordinator with Wed in Ireland. Deegan agrees and even has a "Celtic" priest on hand for those whose are "spiritual" rather than "religious".
FR SEOSAMH Ó RIAIN (30) is an ordained Catholic priest who conducts Celtic wedding blessings. These involve tying a couple's hands and their parents' hands with the priest's stole.
"It really brings home to the in-laws that they're joining with another family," he says. "You see the looks on their faces sometimes and it's obvious that the reality has only just hit them."
Fr Ó Riain has, he says, blessed the marriages of Jewish, Anglican, Catholic and no-faith couples in castles, backyards, and "every nook and cranny of Ireland. These are couples who have said no to God but yes to spirit. They feel more spiritual than faithful and find the Celtic traditions are more enriching, more symbolic and more spiritual than the clinical Catholic service".
But the Catholic Church offers couples more flexibility than they realise, according to Fr Padraig McCarthy, author of a comprehensive guide to organising a Catholic wedding, A Wedding of Your Own. He participates in many weddings and believes most couples spend far more than €30,000 on the day.
"Couples shouldn't feel pressured to spend a lot out of fear that others will think they are mean if they don't," he advises.
The extravagant wedding is a recent introduction in Ireland, he suggests, but a ceremony where couples wear ordinary clothes and then go to a restaurant where everyone pays their own way can be just as meaningful.
His own parents married at 6.30am in Rathmines, Dublin, had a wedding breakfast with friends, then caught the mailboat at 8.45am to go on their honeymoon.
The Catholic ceremony is more flexible than couples realise, he says. There are four choices of vows and couples may select their own readings and music, as long as these are consistent with their faith. Poetry, as a reflection, is fine during the service, although dogs walking up the aisle are not. He suggests that the reception is the place for more secular or offbeat expressions of a couple's love.
DEEGAN HAS PLANNED small weddings costing as little as €5,000, including travel expenses and accommodation.
"I'm into romance and when a couple are very much in love, it doesn't matter what they are spending," she says. "I've organised weddings for two, followed by a quiet drink in the pub."
Dodson agrees. "The simplest and least expensive wedding, followed by a meal in a good restaurant with a few friends, can be just as meaningful and romantic as a lavish event," she says. "The couple put the same effort in, no matter what it costs. Some brides are in their element being the focus of 350 guests, but for others it is intimidating."
Emer Carey and Fergal Dunne, who live in Castlebar, Co Mayo, are currently enjoying a "brilliant" honeymoon on the Amalfi coast, south of Naples, having married there last week in the presence of 19 family members and friends at a cost of €10,000, including travel and accommodation for the couple and their parents, and the honeymoon afterwards.
Their wedding was organised by Amore Weddings, a consultancy started five years ago by Lisa Crotty after getting married in Italy herself.
"I wouldn't have liked a big wedding in Ireland," Carey says. "I wanted something intimate and special. The English-speaking priest was so welcoming and the staff at the Hotel Furore are amazing. We married in a quaint, small church, then strolled back to the hotel for a champagne reception and nibbles by the pool on the terrace overlooking the sea.
"Then, at seven, we had a six-course Italian meal that lasted for five hours. The day was so beautiful that I had to keep pinching myself. It was completely stress-free because everything was organised for me in advance by Lisa and I didn't have to do a thing. It was a perfect day."