IT’S THE MORNING of the wedding of my little sister to her man. Hair appointment. Make-up appointment. Last minute tights purchasing appointment. Then a taxi to her apartment in the rain. Inside, my sister is sitting by the window with her back to me. Her back looks calm, her side profile unflappable. A woman is painting her face and teasing her hair. And it’s a crazy little thing given the day that’s in it, but the make-up woman’s name is Love.
My little sister insists she is walking to the registry office, and what I think is: “In these shoes? I don’t think so.” What I say is: “That sounds perfect, do you have an umbrella?” I rub her up the wrong way at the best of times and I do not want this to be one of those times.
My shoes might not be appropriate for a 15-minute walk, but the bride is wearing a sensible heel and wants those moments of singledom to be spent out in the fresh air with only the sound of pigeons and heavy traffic on Pearse Street to interrupt her thoughts. My mother’s nerves are shot. Her stomach is in bits. You are not the one getting married, we tell her, but it does no good.
When Love has done her thing, my sister tells me to come into her bedroom and help her with The Dress. I fumble with the hooks and eyes of the foundation garments, she slips The Dress over her head, and then she turns to me with a question in her eyes, and the only answer I can give is: “Oh, Katie, you are beautiful.” My mother’s tummy stops flip-flopping the second she sees her youngest daughter in a dress fashioned from cotton curtain material. It could have ended badly, like the Von Trapps in their dresses, but it works and the relief on my mother’s face is immense.
She got the 1950s dress pattern from Ebay. She bought the flower-splattered pink and green and pale yellow material in Murphy Sheehy Co of Dublin. Then her friend Caroline turned it all into this dream of a dress. Her underskirt is a riot of pink tulle, her gloves vintage lace, her hat is white with added pearls sewn on by the bride-to-be, and it is like something Doris Day would have picked. She could be Doris but she’s herself, picking up her clear dome-shaped umbrella and clasping her bouquet of gerbera daisies and walking out on her wedding day.
The rain stops. I follow about 10 steps behind the bride with my borrowed Canon like an amateur paparazzo. People beep their car horns, a woman does a double take, my sister strides on, nimbly stepping in orange shoes past roadworks and around uneven bits of pavement. I snap and snap and snap. I get her under a road sign saying “stop”. I catch her under another sign that says “bravo”. At a line of traffic cones I tell her to pause because they match her shoes. Snap. She crosses the road to the registry office alone, purposeful strides, no hesitation. Killian is waiting for her there in a straw hat and the pale pink tie that she made for him herself.
We all crowd in, just the two families, and I am not expecting the romance of the occasion to be heightened given that we are essentially in an office. But a niece reads WH Auden’s O Tell Me The Truth About Love. (My favourite bit: “When it comes, will it come without warning/Just as I’m picking my nose?/Will it knock on my door in the morning/Or tread in the bus on my toes?/Will it come like a change in the weather?/ Will its greeting be courteous or rough?/Will it alter my life altogether?/O tell me the truth about love.”) And the vows are about respecting each other as equals and not valuing material things and treading lightly on the planet. It’s true, down to earth, romance.
This treading lightly is sort of a wedding theme. They walk from the registry office to the Winding Stair for their lunch reception, where the flowers on the table are daisies positioned in recycled jam jars that she filled with sand and shells, both collected from Sandymount Strand.
The name places are old-fashioned paper luggage labels. The decorations, strings of coloured bunting, have been hand made by the couple. There is no wedding cake and the whole thing cost what some people spend on a dress. In her speech, my fully recovered mother says she hopes they will be making bunting together forever.
I’m the last unmarried sister. My status may never be updated. But if it does change – and Katie’s was the kind of wedding that makes you reconsider these things – then I will draft my youngest sister in as a wedding consultant. And the hair and make-up will be by Love.
THIS WEEKEND
Róisín will be donning her best headgear for Aidan Lynch’s Hat for Haiti fundraiser at the Sycamore Club in Dublin at 8pm tonight.
Philip Treacy has donated a hat for the raffle and all proceeds will go to the Haven Partnership’s Build It Week. havenpartnership.com