It can be awkward turning up at a party wearing the same outfit as someone else, but when that someone else is the President of Ireland, it's a bit of a coup.
"Haven't we got powerful taste?" said Mrs McAleese as she and Anne Donnelly compared their pink and white Louise Kennedy jackets at Áras an Uachtaráin yesterday.
"There must be a good sale on those jackets," quipped Martin McAleese over his wife's shoulder.
"It's only my second time to wear it," said a clearly delighted Anne afterwards. "I'm so thrilled I had it on today."
Anne, from Dunshaughlin, brought her now-famous jacket to the Áras to attend a garden party hosted by the President and Dr McAleese. She was one of 350 guests at the party, held to honour community groups and individuals from all over Ireland.
A family garden party will be held tomorrow, while two more will be held next week - one for immigrants and one to mark the Twelfth of July.
Active retirement groups, prayer groups, ICA members- and the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind were among the 23 groups in the Phoenix Park yesterday.
The Artane Senior Band entertained the guests as the fountains gushed in the background and the happy crowds queued to meet the President.
With 350 people all wanting their special time with Mrs McAleese, the meet-and-greet was organised with military precision. One staff member took the cameras from the queuing guests while aide-de-camp Rossa Mulcahy took the guests' photographs and passed the cameras back as each group was ferried out to the manicured lawns.
"We just love her," said Anne Wagner, after she and her husband Emil met Mrs McAleese. When Anne's hairdresser, John, heard that she was meeting the President, he asked her to get an autograph. "And she said she'd do it," Anne said.
Mary Fitzgerald, who is 92½, was confident that she was the oldest guest there. "I think she's lovely, and her husband is charming," she said before she went out to admire the gardens.
Louise Maguire from Dublin said she prayed for the President every day. "St Paul said you should pray for your leaders. I pray for An Taoiseach, too. But she's just an exquisite lady, cultured, brilliant and she has the common touch."
But the carefree afternoon took a sombre turn when Mrs McAleese told her guests that the news was getting worse from London. "They are gathering now in sadness in hospitals and in morgues," she said. People had left for work as normal and had no idea of what lay ahead.
"Or maybe they were on their holidays, enjoying life or maybe doing what we've done today, putting on the glad rags and going out," she said. "It's a terrible thing to think that somebody with evil and hatred in their hearts ruined what should have been a great day in London."
The bombing seemed a million miles from the tranquil setting yesterday, but for a moment the guests bowed their heads and thought of the unfolding misery.
