My Wedding Day with Brian Redmond: 'Our anthem for the first dance was Mark McCabe's Maniac 2000'

Irish Examiner

22-04-2025

We got married on May 17, 2007. We had the ceremony in St Matthew's Church in Lucan, where we were living at the time, and we had the reception in Dunboyne Castle in County Meath. We had 120 guests, so not too big, and not too small.
I asked Jen to marry me about 18 months beforehand, and we'd been together maybe another 18 months before that. We were going to visit my brother in Hong Kong. The day before, I arranged a meal with Jen, Jen, and our two sets of parents.
I planned on asking Jen to marry me before the meal and hoped we would be celebrating our engagement with the trip to Hong Kong. She said yes, so we had a lovely meal with our parents and then went to Hong Kong the next day.
We had a second trip planned to go and visit my brother a couple of months before the wedding, and we decided to get the gents' suits made for myself and each of the groomsmen and the dads.
We went for a fairly standard look for the suits; they were a very dark brown and because they were tailored, it meant that each person could get what they wanted, whether that was single-breasted or double-breasted or a three-piece suit, they could all have their own take on it.
I know some of the guys to this day have that suit from our wedding. And I still have mine, stored away with Jen's wedding dress.
Jen's dress was perfect; the main reason was because she was wearing it, but also Jen's mother makes wedding dresses and so Jen worked very closely with her to design her dress from scratch. I think that was probably special for both of them. We were lucky enough to be able to do that and it meant a lot to them.
Music is something that's obviously important to me, and Jen as well. Throughout the day we had little music nods.
Brian and Jen Redmond on their wedding day.
We had a friend who was connected with the Dublin Gospel Choir. So we arranged for the choir to sing at the wedding ceremony in the church. That was pretty spectacular and made the ceremony even more memorable.
Given my background in dancing and the type of people that were going to be at the wedding, Jen didn't want to do a big convoluted performance in a room half full of professional dancers, but we had a bit of fun with it.
We did a little choreographed number to Jack Johnson's Better Together. And then we went into what was our anthem at the time for the first dance, and that was Mark McCabe's Maniac 2000. Everybody could join in and jump around the place, and it took the pressure off everyone.
Our band was what you might describe as left field. They were a sort of disco punk band from Wexford. We'd been to see a few different bands before the wedding, and we just wanted somebody that was really good fun, and that's exactly what they were.
I can't remember what the first song they sang was, but I remember the lead singer of the band jumped down off the stage, ran across the dance floor and jumped up on the very first table, and performed the song from there, and I thought, yeah, we're in for a good night.
Our speeches were very traditional: I did a speech, and I guess I wouldn't have done as much public speaking then as I'm used to doing now, but I wasn't particularly nervous about it. My father-in-law, again, being traditional, did the speech to represent that side of the family.
One of his quotes highlighted the fact that I love my food. He stood up and said that he didn't so much see it as losing a daughter as gaining an eating machine.
We stayed up right through to three or four in the morning. Apart from being played as our first dance, Maniac 2000 was also played by the DJ at some point during the night, about half 11 or 12 o'clock, and then for the dirty stop-outs that were still there with us at three or four in the morning, I remember somebody playing it on their phone again at that time. It was a long night.
When I look back on the day, one thing I remember was our first dance. It's the only time during the wedding day when nobody will come near you.
You're on show all day long, with people wanting to talk to you, but when you're getting up to your first dance, it's the first moment of just the two of you together.
Although it's very public in terms of how it's done, it's the first moment where it's just you and your partner. And I had this overwhelming sense during that first dance that all the formalities are done, and the rest of our lives are ahead of us.
And it really did feel like the end of the wedding day, but the start of everything else that was to come.