Weddings are all about stories and I get to hear some brilliant ones! Our wedding memories are wrapped up in images. There's the ones in our head that are as vivid as the day they happened. And then we have treasured photographs which capture a moment in time. Photos allow us to remember emotions which is what makes them so special.
Recently, lots of you have been showing me photos of your Grandparents weddings. I thought it was time to put our favourite relatives on the stage and hear some stories about their wonderful wedding days! The series is all about the romance, the style and the personalities.
Sarah was married recently and I remember her telling me that she was going to have framed pictures of her parents and grandparents at her wedding. She was lucky to have great photos from both sets of grandparents, so this is the first of two features!
Here's Sarah to tell us about her Grandparents, Rosaleen and Patrick O' Loughlin who were married in Killany church in County Louth on the 12th of June 1956!
Rosaleen and Patrick O' Loughlin are married on 12th June 1956
"My nanny Rosaleen O' Loughlin was quite ahead of her time (for Ireland) in a white tea length wedding dress. She brought her wedding cake and dress back from London and according to my Mam was the "height of fashion with a slight London accent", that Mam picked up as a young child.
My Nanny and Grandad met in London and ended up living in the same building near Notting Hill. Grandad always says their song was "Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me, twice on the pipe." As this was apparently something they could do! When things got bad they decided to make their life back in Ireland. Nanny had originally gone to England to train as a nurse but quickly realised it wasn't for her. Grandad was a carpenter working in London at the time. So, nanny persuaded Grandad to become a member of the Garda Síochána as it was a good pensionable steady job. (but a big pay cut for him at the time!)
And so it happened that Nanny O' Loughlin was working in Lyons tea shop in England while my Grandad trained as a Garda in Ireland for two years. Love letters went back and forth during this time and I'd love to find them. My Mam says they're in the attic. Anyway, my favourite part of the story has to be when my Grandad met my nanny off the train. Nanny saw that my Grandad had his hair in a tight crew cut for the guards. Her first words to him after after a year of these beautiful love letters were...
"I don't like your hair"
... and my Grandad, a normally easy tempered man, retorted,
"You don't look so hot yourself!"
Despite the fiery start, a trait my mother attributes to my beautiful Nanny often (and that runs in our family!) I have never heard of a couple as in love as my Nanny and Grandad O' Loughlin. If you bump into my Grandad playing his mouth organ in Grace's pub in Rathmines and get chatting to him, you can be guaranteed that at some point in the conversation he will begin to tell you all about my lovely Nanny and how much he still misses her. My Nanny O'Loughlin passed away 21 years ago this August and her memory is still fresh in all our heads."
Post wedding smiles outside the church!
This is the first in a series about Grandparents weddings - do you have any photos that you'd like to share? I'd love to hear from you.
2 comments:
What a lovely post and a wonderful idea for a series, looking forward to them. Christine
Thanks Christine! I really enjoy looking at old wedding photos and they come to life when someone tells you a story about the people in them. I have some really cool ones to share!
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