Charlotte Ryan speaks to history content creator Ann Marie Duffin about Irish wedding traditions of days gone by, and how they compare to today's practices.
Toasting to love, spending time with friends and family, the 10pm chicken-and-chips course by the dancefloor and the chance to, perhaps, even wear a jaunty hat - there are countless reasons to look forward to a good Irish wedding.
What you won't find on that lengthy list, however, are bygone delights such as fasting before Mass, the indignity of letting messers in disguise into the party for fear of social ruin, and catching a piece of cake in a sock lobbed over the bride's shoulder, in the hopes that you, too will walk down the aisle.
And more's the pity.
The Irish weddings of our ancestors used to be far rowdier affairs, but also more communal ones. As history content creator Ann Marie Duffin explains, there are some traditions that can be felt in today's glitzy nuptials, and others that died off, but why did the Irish wedding develop the way it did?
With a background in radio and tourism, Duffin was inspired to start the food history Instagram account Bia Duit after a run-in with a rogue Roman tour guide after a foodie jaunt through the Italian capital, she explains.
"This guy said, 'Oh, God, it was so interesting you guys were from Ireland. You've got such an amazing literary culture and music culture and identity, but you've no real food heritage'. We were like, buddy."
But faced with defending our history as she'd become known to do among her friends, Duffin "had a complete blank", she says.
Throwing herself into the archives, she was reminded that "food is in our place names, food is in so many songs, so many stories".
"Even Queen Maeve was killed with a lump of hard cheese!"
Food also holds the keys to understanding how our ancestors not only lived, but loved, celebrated and made mischief. Nowhere is this history more alive than in Irish weddings - both of today and yesteryear.
For love or money?
Marriage, pre-Famine, was an important institution, Duffin says, but more based on love and community rather than religion or wealth. "People were more inclined to marry quite young and really often for love", she explains, based on research she's done, adding that the 'matchmakers' in communities were more likely neighbours or family members rather than an appointed community figure, as would come later.
"There were way more records of people living together without being married, living in sin, as we call it now", she says, as well as more children born out of wedlock. It was this looseness that led some religious groups, she says, to suggest that "the famine was actually the price that the Irish paid because they were so 'unholy' in certain situations".
Post-Famine, however, the stakes were higher: "If you have land, and land is so scarce and so important, then it's a business transaction."
Not only that, but the priest had more of a central role in weddings, Duffin says. It was then that weddings were taking place after morning Mass on dedicated days. This is also how we get one of our most well-known Irish wedding traditions: the wedding breakfast.
"People would go to Mass, they'd have to fast before Mass, and then they'd have the wedding. So they're coming out, even if it 11 or 12 o'clock, they're absolutely famished because these people are getting up at five or six in the morning", Duffin explains.
So if you've ever been hungry in the hours between a wedding ceremony and the sit-down meal, there's something of a historical reason for that!
By the 1950s, some couples were starting to have their post-wedding celebrations in hotels, Duffin says, but in the post-Famine years, the wedding breakfast was typically held in the bride's house, which could pose its own problem: "When you think about it, you're not really deciding who you're inviting. The entire community is going to come there."
The wedding breakfast
With half the town calling around, what would you be expected to feed them?
Weddings post-Famine were largely community events, with neighbours chipping in with food, drink or other offerings like music.
The wedding meal could include roasted meats like goose, chicken, turkey or ham, which were served with boiled potatoes and vegetables. Potato cakes were typically served on the side and easily fed a large crowd, while stews with rabbit or mutton would be ladled out to guests.
A dessert of apple or rhubarb tart would round the breakfast out, with cups of tea.
Duffin suggests that this generosity of spirit was possibly due to the collective loss and trauma of the Famine itself, with people crying out for something positive to celebrate.
"Weddings and communities might be quite rare because so many people had left, if not worse. So when someone did have a wedding, it was really good for the community because, one, there's love and there's marriage and there's probably young people. But then there's the hope of maybe them having kids and perhaps the locality having a bit more energy again.
"So I think people, for that reason, people were like, 'Absolutely. You know what? I will make some boxty for you.'"
She continues: "It's not too dissimilar that when we're going to a wedding, we're very conscious about putting the money in the card as well because we want to contribute, because two people are starting their lives together."
Sweet dreams
Much like today, no food carried as much significance on the day as the wedding cake. In post-Famine weddings, this would be a wheaten bannock, fruit cake or a tipsy cake - a precursor to the classic sponge cake that was covered in whatever liquor was to hand and was seen as "really, really bold", Duffin says.
The most memorable part of an old Irish wedding, though? The cake sock toss, surely.
Whereas a modern bride might toss her beautifully crafted bouquets over her shoulder for the unmarried women to catch, one old Irish tradition was to take a piece of the wedding cake, place it in a sock and toss it for the single women to catch.
Far less messy than a flower toss. "I actually did try to make my friend do that at a wedding, and she told me where to go", Duffin says.
The wedding cake was also loaded with superstition, she says: one practice saw young unmarried women take a crumb from the cake and sleep with it underneath their pillows. If they dreamt of a man, it was believed he would be her husband.
Keeping up appearances
Just as with modern weddings, there was an element of keeping up appearances at weddings of old, especially when it came to the strawboys - revellers who would call into weddings and play music, similar to mummers and the wren boys in other parts of the country.
Their conical straw hats could, however, be a blessing or a curse depending on the wedding.
"You had the local strawboys who were very steeped in tradition, so everyone would know there'd be a bit of craic", Duffin explains. "So if you actually got them to come to your wedding, great, and if there was a rake of them, it just showed that they were really popular."
One tradition was that the strawboys would knock on the door, asking to be let in, and if the groom refused to it was seen as very bad luck.
However, if no strawboys arrived - if it's understood that one of the lovers is in love with somebody else or some other kind of drama - that was seen as potentially worse, Duffin says. "So there are lots of stories about people, bridesmen or bridegrooms waiting at the door, waiting to invite the straw boys in, and them not coming."
Generations have looked to the past for wisdom for the present, and while not every couple will want to feature a cake sock toss on their big day, the lessons of community and generosity are evergreen.
As, too, is one trick from the historical accounts: if you're not invited to a wedding and you really want to go, there's nothing to stop you dressing up as a strawboy, sneaking in past the groom and causing mischief.
