Aisling ByrnePhotography, Galway

Oranmore, then Salthill · May

Niamh and Ruairí

Getting ready in the house she grew up in, a borrowed car, and a gale on Salthill promenade that ruined the hair and made the pictures.

01Her mother buttoned the dress in the back bedroom in Oranmore, which is the room Niamh had as a child, and which is why the light in it is so good at ten in the morning.

02The car belongs to her uncle and has belonged to him since 1979. It sat in the rain outside the front door for forty minutes while everybody looked for a shoe.

03Salthill in May is a gale about half the time. We went anyway, brought the wellingtons, and got the best fifteen minutes of the day.

04Ninety guests, a band from Loughrea, and the last song at ten past one.

A bride in a robe lifting her wedding dress down from a hanger in front of a bright window
09:40. The back bedroom in Oranmore.
An older woman fastening the back of a bride gown, close in, window light from the left
Her mother. Twenty eight buttons and a hook.
A white 1970s saloon car with a ribbon parked in the rain, seen through an open front door of a house
The car waited. So did we, for a shoe.
A couple stepping out of a doorway into a shower of paper hearts thrown by guests, in black and white
Out the door at half twelve into paper hearts.
A bride hand resting on her tulle skirt, a plain gold band on her finger, a bouquet of sea holly and eucalyptus beside it
Sea holly, because it grows at the end of her road.
A couple standing on a stony shore, only their feet and the hem of the dress in frame, she is wearing green wellington boots
19:50. Salthill, a gale, and the wellingtons.

The other days.

Every story here is one wedding or one session, start to finish.

A grey limestone church with a bell tower and a rose window under a flat wet sky, a guest under an umbrella at the doorAoife and CathalMoycullen, then the lake road · OctoberA father in a sheepskin coat walking hand in hand with a toddler along a pebble shore, calm water behindThe LanigansSilver Strand · February
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