They call it Puppy-Love

The recent spell of warm weather has brought more than the dandelions into bloom. Young lovers, in the first blush of infatuation, find that the warmth of their feelings is complemented by the long, bright and balmy evenings. You can see them, holding on to each other, as if the loved one might disappear prematurely, like the early summer. They stick to each other like limpets to a rock, lest their experience of puppy-love fizzle out or go flat, like the effervescence of tepid beer on a warm afternoon. They are taking their cue from nature of course. The warming of the earth provides us with the animal trigger that prompts procreation and long-term planning for strong offspring by the following winter.

Those couples whose puppy-love days are over and who have reached the serious stage of commitment to mortgage and marriage plan their nuptial ceremonies in a swell that begins this time of year and lasts all through the summer and into early autumn. The rituals are well-known and rarely deviated from. Even the most non-conformist of individuals becomes a stickler for protocol when a wedding carnation is pinned on them. It can take an age for the wedding party to simply sit down at the hotel table as nobody will risk sitting in the ‘wrong’ seat. Ladies’ hats may not be removed until the bride’s mother removes her crowning creation. Only then may the feathered-nest or the satellite-dish headdress be set aside.

The mortgage market has left many couples with strict budgets and little disposable income to spend on a day that can cost tens of thousands of Euro. This is encouraging a small section of the wedding market to go abroad. The traditional destination is Rome but more are now going to other European countries. Professional wedding planners are paid to sort out the paperwork, the religious ceremony, if chosen, and the translation problems. There is also a small but growing number of marriages between immigrants from central or Eastern Europe and Irish people.

The only time many adults may ever make a public speech is at the marriage of one of their children or as best-man for a friend or sibling. It is easy for a partly-public figure like me to forget how frightening it can be for most people to stand up in front of a crowd and deliver a speech. I have sat beside so many people at weddings who have not been able to eat; such was their state of nervous tension at the prospect of speechifying later on. The worst cases are the characters who have no problem with blarney when they are sitting down but whose power of speech appears to drain away to their nether regions when they stand vertically. Some of the more nervous try to drown the butterflies in their stomachs with frequent trips to the bar and to the toilet. Others just sit and allow the table to absorb the nervous energy from their trembling legs.

The church ceremony tends to be more relaxed and better prepared than it was in past times. There is still room for the occasional gaffe. One of these was a groom who misread the text as he offered his bride a ring, ‘as a sign of my faithful love’. That inspirational sentiment somehow became a declaration of manhood as he offered her the ring with the promise that it was a sign of his ‘fertile’ love. His fertility was already beyond doubt but we all knew what he meant. One of my own less glorious moments was when I lost the text and mis-remembered the words of a blessing. Faithful and unbroken love became a little confused and conflated as I blessed the rings to be worn, ‘as a sign of unfaithful love’. I could not have picked a worse congregation or couple as an audience for my lapse. The wedding party was made up mainly of amateur drama enthusiasts.

The person who is most likely to ruin the bride’s day, and that of everyone else, is the ironically-titled ‘best-man’. A common misunderstanding among these specially-chosen attendants is that they have to be stand-up comedians and satirists as well. Rather than drawing attention to the centrality of the bride and groom they often sink into embarrassing, self-centered, adolescent stories that are no longer funny, or they tell off-colour jokes that do not go down well with the top table or on the floor. Priests are often accused of speaking for too long at Mass but try getting the microphone back from many wedding-guest orators, especially still-doting fathers of the bride. I have never heard an audience call for an encore from such a top-table speaker.

Clichés become ever more grating with the passage of time. I often wonder if the epithet ‘new wife’ indicates that the groom is guilty of having an ‘old wife’ stashed away somewhere else. Is there such a thing as a ‘new future’? The most successful speakers are those who speak simply and briefly about the couple or about one of them, and who do so with feeling and insight. The spotlight properly belongs to the couple and not to the penguin charged with managing the post-prandial proceedings. The wedding circuit is a long way from puppy-love and it all attracts a certain cynicism in our times. One priest suggested that the first line of a funeral ritual has been mis-placed and should properly be used to begin the wedding ritual. ‘Before we go our separate ways…’