My Wedding Day with Bonnie Ryan: 'We had a Jameson stand, the whiskey my dad loved'

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

We got married on May 22, 2022. Due to the pandemic, we had to postpone our wedding for a year, but it meant we got to be in that lovely engagement bubble for longer.
We had our wedding in Italy, where my sister, Lottie, got married, in the village where her husband is from, in the middle of nowhere — Macchia — and it's just beautiful. The only people who live in the village are his grandparents and a few other people. We got married in St Augustine's Chapel.
Lucky for us, Lottie's husband's mom knows absolutely everybody in the village, so she, basically, was my wedding planner. She made a tonne of calls and made things happen. I don't know how we could have done it without her.
For the wedding, we were trying to keep it as small as possible, but then you start going through numbers, and, the next minute, you're way past the 100 mark. I don't know how I thought I was going to keep it below 100. In the end, we got it to 110, which was just perfect.
The thing is that my husband, John, grew up down the road from me. We met when we were 10 years old and we've hung around together since we were kids. So that means we have much of the same friend group, and our bridal party had all been our friends since we were 10 or 11, as well.
For my dress, I started looking through Pinterest, and I found this one dress and I thought 'I have to find where this dress is from'. I searched everywhere for the dress, rang loads of bridal stores, and, eventually, I found it in Tamem Michael in Dublin.
I went with my mom and my older sister, and I said 'OK, let's just try this one on first, so I can get it out of my head, because it's the one that I've been looking at for ages on my phone'. I put the dress on and it was the one.
Bonnie and John at the altar on their wedding day.
The only thing I changed about it was I designed my own sleeves. I wanted something that was customised for me, something that made the dress a little bit different. So I did up a few different drawings of these over-the-top sleeves that you could take on and off. And the girls in the store were able to make them for me. I was so happy with how the dress looked and how I felt in it. It was worth all the stress.
On the morning of the wedding we all got up really early. We had breakfast and mimosas together, and the hairdresser came and she did everyone's hair. It was very calm. I did my own makeup, and, yeah, it was all just very relaxing.
We pulled up to the church, and my little brother, Elliot, was waiting on me outside. He walked me down the aisle. When I got out of the car and he saw me, he said 'Oh my god, you're a bride'. And I thought 'I am a bride'. Him having that reaction really made me think 'This is actually happening'.
Bonnie coming down the stairs at the venue on her wedding day.
Father Brian D'Arcy performed the ceremony for us. My family would have known Brian for years and years; he actually christened a few of us. After the ceremony, we went outside to a little piazza, and we had a couple of nibbles. Then, everyone got on to a big bus and we drove the 15-20 minutes to our venue — Borgo dei Lecci — and then we spent the rest of the day there. We were there for hours!
I didn't make a speech, because I just knew I'd be thinking about it for the whole day. But our speeches — to this day, all my friends still say, 'We did not want your speeches to end'.
Bonnie and John outside with their guests on their wedding day.
They were so good, so funny. I didn't regret not speaking. I felt like it was actually the right thing. I was so enjoying everybody else's speech, I was glad that I didn't put the pressure on myself, because I was really able to be present and take everyone's speech in.
Our song was called Live Wire, by a band called Oh Wonder. Before we bought our house, I used to stay over at my husband's parents' house every weekend. We had this ritual on a Sunday morning, where we made pancakes in the morning, listening to this band. And so that song reminded us of those lovely weekends as we were growing up. It was a special time in our life.
We had a very Italian-style band playing for the first while, and then we moved on to a DJ with a singer and people were on the dance floor all night. We also had a cocktail stand outside, where staff were making cocktails for everybody.
And we had a little Jameson stand, because that was the whiskey that my dad loved to drink. And I think that kind of sent everybody into orbit! So that was a bit dangerous. We had the best night ever. And then we looked at the time and it was five o'clock in the morning!