6. An Irish Wedding

When my brother Dennis married Geraldine O’Mahony, I was eight. Dennis, like many other Georgetown alums, had found his way into the bar business, in his case, after teaching English at St. John’s High School. He met his beautiful bride at Matt Kane’s on 13th Street. She and her family had left Waterford, Ireland when she was twelve and made their way to Washington after seven years in Canada.

Although the prospect of being a flower girl in their wedding was exciting, the best part of Geraldine’s appearance on the scene for me was meeting her sister Katherine, who was born on my half birthday of the same year. When Katherine came to stay, we turned the house upside down. We took all the cushions off the living room furniture and built tunnels. We staged an original production of The Dead Hand, a play about two sisters who found a bloody human hand in their wash tub and tried to find its owner. We played until we fell into bed, exhausted from unbridled fun.

When Geraldine and my sister Missy took us downtown to shop for our flower girl dresses, they ended up dragging us down F Street by our ponytails because we were “out of control.” Catherine was the yin to my yang. She was the extrovert to my introvert. Her name was Catherine Mary and mine, Mary Kathleen. Don’t be bold, Cáití, her mother would caution. But I was having a ball. Bring it on, Cáití.

Dennis and Geraldine were married in St. Anthony’s Church in Brookland near Catholic University with my brothers Kevin and Brian serving as altar boys. Besides walking up the aisle with flowers and ribbons that felt like they had been stapled onto my skull, I only remember one thing from the wedding mass.

As they knelt on the altar during the consecration, Geraldine gently disappeared into the voluminous folds of her wedding dress skirt. It looked like the wicked witch melting at the end of the Wizard of Oz, only infinitely more beautiful. She just slowly and softly drifted down into a giant mass of lace and silk. She had fainted, maybe because she was pregnant. Her dress could have been too tight. 

Without their families’ knowledge, Dennis and Geraldine had a civil ceremony several months before the wedding. The first piece of furniture Dennis bought was a mattress at Woodward & Lothrop downtown. Not being in possession of a car, he tried to take it home on the bus to their newly rented apartment but was turned away. With some cash in hand and a convincing tale, Dennis got a cab driver to let him tie the mattress to the roof of his cab. 

Their wedding reception began in a fairly predictable fashion. While a meal was served, there were a few toasts by the best man, fathers, bridesmaids, etc. The champagne, whiskey, and beer flowed. But after the meal, the reception took a decidedly Irish turn. 

There’s a tradition in Ireland, particularly in the West, not just at wedding receptions and funerals, but even on a visit to the pub for a pint. Everyone, and it truly seems to be everyone, stands up to sing or dance or play the fiddle or recite a poem. 

Among the participants was Geraldine’s cousin Tom Foley who sang several songs in his lovely tenor voice. Geraldine’s mother Kate was an All-Ireland step-dancer, and she got up to dance. She was barely five feet tall. Katherine and I lay on the floor to measure how far off the ground she got. It was easily a foot.

Kate made no bones about complaining to my mother that the American side of the room had so little to contribute. Mom’s Nebraska Presbyterian upbringing hadn’t prepared her for this particular event.

But there was one participant representing the Reillys and Swifts. It was my mother’s great uncle Bill MacAuley. Uncle Bill was 87 and had taken the train down from Middlebury, Vermont where he and Aunt Edna had retired. But Uncle Bill was all Brooklyn, born and raised. He and Edna had spent most of their sixty two years of marriage in Flatbush.

When he first stood up, Bill was a little shaky but he righted himself and made his way to the front of the room. Once there, he reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a large linen handkerchief. Then he reached into his mouth and took out his false teeth: first the top, then the bottom. He folded his handkerchief carefully around the dentures and put them into his pants pocket.

At this point, everyone in the room looked embarrassed for him and seemed anxious to move on to the next song. But when Uncle Bill began to sing Secondhand Mo, the room turned silent. He had a beautiful voice, packed with Brooklyn and clear as a bell. By the end, even the catering staff were weeping.

But Catherine and I soon tired of the room. We left to discover the rest of the building, which was empty on this Saturday afternoon. From somewhere, though, we heard the sounds of a piper. We weren’t sure from where the sound came, so we went from door to door, trying each latch to see if it were open. We wandered through hallways and down stairs, finally reaching the lowest level of the building.

As we got closer, the music grew louder. We found the piper in the basement men’s room, warming up his uileann pipes. We wanted to go inside, but we had never walked into a men’s room anywhere. We sat down just outside the bathroom and leaned against the wall, our hair ornaments askew and our shoes long gone. After several minutes Katherine stood up and said, I’m going in. You can stay here or you can come with me. I got up.

We pushed open the door and there he stood in his Irish kilt and crisp white cotton shirt, playing his pipes before the mirrors. He had a white sporran across his kilt and white knee socks. The sound reverberated through the room. He stopped playing and smiled, Is it time? Yes, we said. Time to send off the bride and groom.

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In the photo (l-r): Geraldine in a beauty contest in New York; Katherine and me with my mother and Tom Foley; and Uncle Bill.

One of my favorite videos is entitled, “5 a.m. at an Irish wedding.” It exemplifies the Irish tradition of singing at gatherings and is well worth a look. Click here to watch.