Wedding waves

Wedding waves for pirate princess

Áine Ryan

ISLAND BRIDE, Aoife O’Toole, didn’t quite have to walk the plank as last weekend she took to the waves after her romantic church ceremony on Clew Bay outpost, Clare Island.

Sipping champagne on the upper-deck of island ferry – The Pirate Queen – turned out to be a less bumpy affair for the bridal party than meteorologists had predicted last Friday afternoon, as the hundreds of guests headed for Westport afterwards for the next part of the unusual nuptials.

However, the voyage south the following day (Saturday) to Inishturk – for yet another session of ceol agus craic – proved more of a bumpy ride for those who still had their sea-legs.

Nobody was surprised when invitations went out some weeks ago for the solemnisation of the love affair between Clare islander, Aoife O’Toole and Inishturk native, Eugene O’Toole. By all accounts, the long-time couple – who have two children, Darragh (2) and Tomás (five months) – are a match made in heaven. The fact they chose to hold the church service on Clare Island was no surprise either. “Home is home,”  said Aoife to The Mayo News on the night before her wedding.

“By getting married here, I can leave home in Ballytoughey on the morning of my wedding and Eugene can leave his house on Inishturk. We both liked that idea,” said Aoife.

She also said she wanted to visit her grandmother Jane (Heaney) O’Malley –  at 91, the oldest person on Clare Island – on the way to the church.

“Granny won’t be fit to come to the church so we want to call in and give her a bunch of flowers and have some photographs taken afterwards,” confided the bride-to-be.

Imagine her surprise when she discovered her granny – along with Eugene’s grandfather, at 91 also, the oldest person on Inishturk – waiting in the front pew last Friday morning. Of course – like all the best brides – she had kept the congregation waiting for half an hour.

It has been almost 20 years since there was a wedding between an Inishturk and Clare islander. Furthermore, ironically, for celebrant, Fr Denis Carney (pictured), Aoife was one of the first babies he had christened after being appointed to Clare Island in 1983 and, with a sense of déjà vu, last Friday morning, she became the first of that generation of islanders to marry.

At least, Fr Carney wasn’t forced to call on the Air Corps for an emergency ride to the island, as Father Jackie Conroy did 35 years ago – in October 1973. Back then, stormy weather on Clew Bay naturally left bride-to-be, the late Kathleen Bessie O’Malley, wondering whether her wedding dress should be left in mothballs for another day in her Cap-nagower home. But the intervention of then TD, Deputy Myles Staunton saved the day as he helped commandeer an Irish Army helicopter for a damsel in possible distress on an offshore island.